A biotechnology company on Tuesday introduced a herbal medicine for the treatment of cancer-related fatigue (CRF), touting it as the first drug ever developed specifically for that purpose.
The intravenous drug, made from a herb commonly used in Chinese medicine, can increase the energy, or chi, of patients, said Chen Kuang-chi (陳寬墀), chief executive officer of Maywufa Bio Pharmaceutical Group.
The drug, recently approved by Taiwanese health authorities, is expected to provide relief for about 80 percent of cancer patients, the Maywufa CEO said at a press conference.
“Astragalus membranaceus, or huang chi, is the No. 1 energy booster in Chinese medicine,” said Lee Kuo-hsiung (李國雄), an Academia Sinica academician.
However, the drug does not come cheap.
One gram of the powder, which makes two injections, costs NT$25,000.
The suggested dose for cancer patients is two to three injections per week, according to the developers.
Lee, who came up with the idea of integrating huang chi into Western medicine, said Taiwan has a great advantage in developing new drugs based on Chinese herbs.
A large-scale clinical trial of the new drug on stroke patients is underway, as the company is also testing its effectiveness on people suffering from other diseases, Chen said.
Although most healthy people experience fatigue from time to time, CRF is more severe.
Causes of CRF include anemia, emotional distress, sleep disturbance and side effects of cancer treatments.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching