Evaluation of a complementary treatment in experimental oncology – preliminary results

Complementary medicine techniques (CMT) are a diverse procedures of health care practices and products that fall outside the traditional western medical theory and practice. The use of CMT have increased over the past decades, and more scientific evidence to sustain their use must be achieved. Our goal with this experiment is to investigate the possible benefic effects of “hands on treatment” in an experimental model of oncology. Two groups of nine Spargue‐Dawkey female rats, one month old, were submitted to the protocol of breast cancer. One group (I) was maintained with no other treatment for 24 weeks. The other group (II) was submitted to hands on treatment, three times a week, 15 minutes each, during 24 weeks. All the animals that survived were sacrificed after 24 weeks. All the animals were weighted weekly and a hemogram was done for each animal when sacrificed. In group I only five animals had survived and in group II survived seven animals. The group II animals were more quite and social in response to the researchers. The were no significant differences between the median weight of the groups, nor the hemograms. Although there were a small number of animals in each group, the results suggest that may be some influence by the treatment, because more animals survived in the treatment group and these animals were more quite. These results also justify a more detailed study of this treatment technique.