Mistletoe ‘may prolong’ lives of cancer patients

“For the production of Iscador, mistletoe plants are harvested in the summer – the stems and leaves – and in the winter – the stems, leaves and berries – and then fermented with lactobacillus,” the ‘Discovery News’ portal quoted lead researcher Renatus Ziegler as saying.

In their study, Ziegler and colleagues at Institute Hiscia in Arlesheim studied a group of cervical and ovarian cancer patients to see how they might benefit in the long run if mistletoe extracts, such as Iscador, were added to their treatment regimes.

Over the course of a few decades, cancer patients who added mistletoe preparations to their standard therapies lived an average of half a year longer, the researchers found in the research.

“Mistletoe is an old medical drug in Europe particularly in Germany and goes back at least to Hippocrates. The exact mechanism of its (healing) actions are not known,” Ziegler said, adding prior studies, both on animals and in the lab, indicated it curbs the growth of cancerous tumours.

The findings of the study have been published in the ‘European Journal of Integrative Medicine’.