Is Cancer Linked to Inflammation? Can Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Fight Cancer?

Patients often ask me this; some even say that certain web articles claim anti-inflammatory drugs can treat cancer. I am writing this article to set out my understanding of the question.

Cancer is sometimes called "the wound that will not heal." When our tissues (such as skin) are injured, the wound heals quickly, and healing requires the proliferation and migration of normal cells. But the hallmark of cancer cells is precisely proliferation and migration, so sometimes the wound-healing signaling system is indeed hijacked by cancer cells. Some cancer cells exploit the signaling system our bodies rely on for wound healing, keeping our tissues in a state of chronic inflammation. In this state, our tumor suppressor genes and immune system cannot do their job of restraining cancer cell development.

Conversely, a body kept chronically inflamed also requires somatic cells to keep proliferating and migrating to repair cells damaged by the inflammation. Every round of somatic-cell proliferation and migration carries a certain number of mutations; most mutations do not cause cancer, but a few may give rise to cancer cells. So some chronic inflammations are indeed premalignant lesions — for example, chronic atrophic gastritis is a premalignant lesion of gastric cancer, and chronic hepatitis is a premalignant lesion of liver cancer.

Theoretically, normal cells also undergo mutations as they divide and proliferate. We humans, as multicellular organisms made of billions of cells, begin as a single simple zygote (fertilized egg). In the course of developing from one zygote into a giant multicellular being, every cell in our body has the chance to mutate a little; the overwhelming majority of mutations do not cause cancer, and only a minority do.

The accelerated proliferation and migration of cells caused by inflammation is one of those minority cases. So inflammation and cancer are related; as tumor tissue develops, it in turn creates new inflammatory problems, which make our internal environment even more favorable to cancer cells.

But once inflammation has progressed to cancer, it has undergone a quantitative-to-qualitative leap that can never be reversed. Cancer cell proliferation follows its own rules, so once a tumor has formed, ordinary anti-inflammatory drugs cannot cure it. Some anti-inflammatory drugs merely have an adjunctive role. Many of the heat-clearing, toxin-resolving herbs in Chinese medicine prolong cancer patients' survival for exactly this reason.

So we cannot pin our hopes of treating cancer on anti-inflammatory drugs, but we can bring anti-inflammatory drugs supported by clinical data into the comprehensive regimen for cancer. When Chinese herbal formulas treat cancer, they also make heavy use of broad-spectrum antimicrobial herbs (these are usually heat-clearing toxin-resolving herbs, though some are not traditional heat-clearing toxin-resolving herbs). Such herbs do, in fact, help prolong cancer patients' lives and improve their quality of life.