QUESTION:
The case is more tricky just because of the little girl’s age. At 9 months of age she was diagnosed with AML subtype M7. Chemo was started right away and at the time my role was to support chemotherapy with homeopathy and treat the mother with supplementation as she is actively nursing. She made it through 4 rounds of chemo with very little trouble, there was only one episode during the 4th round that I struggled a little to treat any fever or complications with homeopathy. For most of those times if she began to get a fever, the mother would take a remedy, and then also put it on the baby’s forehead and every time the fever would drop down. The same was true for any nausea or other side effects. It appeared she went through with ease, she recovered counts after 14 days and there was never more than 19 day stay in the hospital. After her 1st round of chemo bone marrow showed her to be in remission. During the 4th round of chemo she got a weird fever that was different than anything that far. I believe that was the start of the relapse, this round also took a little longer (18 days) to recover counts. After the 4th round of chemo the bone marrow biopsy showed a return of blasts and there was a relapse. Although at the time of the bone marrow biopsy she appeared to be a healthy 16 month old child. There was no sign of disease. 1 week after the biopsy she developed symptoms and with in 24 hours she had fever and a lot of bone pain. A 5th round of chemo was started (this was the last week of December).Fevers and side effects were still managed great with homeopathy. However this time it took 33 days for her counts to recover, all the while she appeared unaffected by treatment. Subsequent bone marrow biopsy showed there to still be blasts, however the biopsy was spotty. In one sample there was 85% blast and in another sample right next to it there were 5% blasts. Her latest blood count shows WBC at 0.5. Blasts at 20%. Neutrophils at 62, platelets at 19, HGB at 12 (after transfusion however). The oncologist at the hospital are suggesting to do methotrexate at home weekly with an attempt to get her counts low enough for BMT. The parents’ goal is to build her up as much as possible. The hospital offered to give her IV glutathione and Vitamin C but they wanted to do 15mg to start of Vit C and really did not have a protocol in place. She still nurses and some days that is her only source of food if she is not feeling well. Her mother eats and has eaten since before pregnancy a 90% organic diet, she was born at home with no complications and has not been vaccinated. Her MTHFR status is negative. The mom is taking a lot of supplements in hopes it will cross into the breast milk.
My questions are the following: 1. I know you have done Vit C in children. The family is very eager to do this however feel the dose of 15mg is what an adult starts at and it would be way too much for her. Using the protocol from the Riordan Clinic and applying Robert’s rule to adjust dose based on her weight I came up with the following. She would start with 2.1mg which is 4.2ml of vit c at .5g/ml. Dr. Riordan said to put the Vit in sterile water, however this small amount will not work in sterile water because of the osmolality and would need to be in a NS solution. We would then work up the dose. This to me seems like not enough but I wanted to get your experience including your thoughts on dosage and your thought on timing. 2. The family is pressing to do glutathione IV. The very little I can find on a child puts the dose at 100mg. I know there is some controversy about glutathione with chemo but I am unclear to the details. There is also some report about glutathione interacting with IVC so is there a timing that can work out or is it even helpful? 3. I am 100% open to any suggestions you may have to guide this family on her treatment.
ANSWER:
1. You appear to be mixing “mg” and “g” above, Dosing for kids or adults is based on body weight and if doing a quality of life approach versus an oxidative approach is quite different. If doing an oxidative dose we use the higher of course. See HERE for dosing calculations. I use these with hospital pharmacies all the time. And as for formulas see HERE. If doing the high dose format sterile water is fine. If not then use normal saline.
2. More than some report of interference (reasonable research it stops oxidative effect if used in proximity. – but totally depends if the dose is oxidative or not. If trying a low dose approach then glutathione is good and safe. if a high dose approach then not. 100-200 mg in this size child is fine for cell support and QOL – but then the IVC dose would be at the lower g/kG.
3. These are tough and almost always very difficult cases to treat. If she could do oral liquids or other IV’s beyond IVC-GSH then there is another combo I have used with AML in kids. My idea would be try alternating low dose IVC + GSH one day and high dose without on the other day and do 2-3 IV’s (rotating as above) for 3-4 weeks. Follow blasts. If better then continue. If not consider the DCA-LAMC idea.