Potential of Alkalization Therapy for the Management of Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: A Retrospective Study.

Simple Summary: In recent years, the acidic tumor microenvironment has been receiving increased attention as a target for cancer treatment. In our previous retrospective studies, we observed that alkalization therapy significantly increased urine pH in patients, which correlated with favorable cancer treatment outcomes. However, the effectiveness of alkalization therapy in conjunction with chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer patients remained unclear, as did the correlation between increased urine pH and extended survival. Therefore, we conducted this retrospective study to investigate the effects of integrating alkalization therapy with current treatments for pancreatic cancer patients, focusing on whether the synergetic effects of pH regulation through alkalization therapy enhance the effectiveness of cancer treatment. In this study, we noted a trend in which longer patient survival was associated with a higher average urine pH, suggesting a correlation between the effectiveness of alkalization therapy and increased urine pH levels. Current treatments for patients with pancreatic cancer offer limited benefits. In this study, we applied alkalization therapy, which was efficacious for other solid tumors at our clinic, to stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients, and investigated its effect on disease prognosis. Patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who were treated at Karasuma Wada Clinic in Kyoto, Japan, between January 2011 and April 2022, were included in the study. All patients received alkalization therapy (a combination of an alkaline diet, bicarbonate, and citric acid administration), alongside standard chemotherapy. Urine samples were collected to assess urine pH as a marker of whole-body alkalization. In the 98 patients analyzed, the median overall survival (OS) from the time of diagnosis was 13.2 months. Patients with a mean urine pH of 7.5 or greater had a median OS of 29.9 months, compared with 15.2 months for those with a mean urine pH of 6.5 to 7.5, and 8.0 months for those with a mean urine pH of less than 6.5, which suggests a trend of a longer OS in patients with a higher urine pH (p = 0.0639). Alkalization therapy may offer a viable approach to extending the survival of stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients, who typically have an unfavorable prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]