CORRESPONDENCE

RESPONSE: Re: Scientific Interest in Newcastle Disease Virus Is Reviving

Nancy J. Nelson

Affiliation of author: Office of Cancer Communications, Office of the Director, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.

Correspondence to: Nancy J. Nelson, National Institutes of Health, Bldg. 31, Rm. 10A-19, Bethesda, MD 20892 (e-mail: nelsonn{at}mail.nih.gov).

Before writing my News article (1) about Newcastle disease virus (NDV) therapy, I read 70 scientific articles in the field. Because I chose to focus on phase II human trials in my report, I reported only Csatary's 1993 publication (2).

Csatary's other publications were anecdotal reports. A letter (3) reported seeing tumor regressions after treating three patients with live virus. A 1999 article (4) described the effects of treating four patients. Another letter (5) reported tumor shrinkage and neurologic improvement in a single glioblastoma patient treated with NDV.

I had noted Csatary's comment in the 1999 article (4) that "over 300 patients have been treated at a private clinic in Budapest" and was anxious to find out the results obtained with those patients. I attempted to contact Csatary at the United Cancer Research Institute (UCRI). Although he never responded, Eva Csatary advised me that they had communicated their best-case series of cancer patients treated with NDV therapy to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). As I reported in my article, NCI scientists were unable to evaluate the effectiveness of the therapy from the information provided.

An article (6) written by the Presidium of the Hungarian Scientific Medical Council stated that the Csatary Center for Virus Therapy in Budapest had requested permission in 1994 to treat 300 patients with NDV. The Council granted this permission but expressly did not approve treatment of additional patients until "certification of the success of the treatment by uninvolved specialists and [of] a vaccine that conforms to [World Health Organization] specifications" (6). In 1998, an independent committee evaluated a report provided by the Csatary Center and concluded that "the treatment did not conform in any way to the conditions under which the permit was granted" and that "it is seriously objectionable that, according to the data provided by the Center, 4004 patients were registered as having been treated as opposed to the 300 for which the permit had been granted" (6).

The committee reported further that "the processed data provided no conclusive evidence on effectiveness, and the notes on individual patient charts are completely unreliable" (6). On this basis, the Presidium of the Scientific Medical Council requested that the Hungarian National Surgeon General ban the treatment, and the Council's Secretariat notified the Csatary Center that the study was terminated.

The Presidium of the Scientific Medical Council agreed with the independent committee that "none of the conditions specified had been met over the nearly decade-long period in which the vaccine had been used" and that "conducting experiments on humans without the proper permits was now subject to criminal sanctions" (6).

I attempted to discuss this article (6) with two members of the Hungarian public health community (whose names were provided by the Hungarian Embassy), but neither one returned my telephone calls. Nevertheless, I thought it was important to refer to the article, because viral strain MTH-68 has been promoted in the alternative medicine literature for many years and because at least two websites refer to Csatary's UCRI (http://www.healthy.net/hwlibraryarticles/canclinic/csatary.htm and http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/utcam/therapies/mth68.htm).

NOTE

Editor's note: The quotations of reference (6) are taken from an English translation of the article provided by the National Institutes of Health library translation service.

REFERENCES

1 Nelson NJ. Scientfic interest in Newcastle disease virus is reviving. J Natl Cancer Inst 1999;91:1708-10.[Free Full Text]

2 Csatary LK, Eckhardt S, Bukosza I, Czegledi F, Fenyvesi C, Gergely P, et al. Attenuated veterinary virus vaccine for the treatment of cancer. Cancer Detec Prev 1993;17:619-27.[Medline]

3 Csatary LK. Viruses in the treatment of cancer. Lancet 1971;2:825.

4 Csatary LK, Moss RW, Beuth J, Torocsik B, Szeberenyi J, Bakacs T. Beneficial treatment of patients with advanced cancer using a Newcastle disease virus vaccine (MTH-68/H). Anticancer Res 1999;19:635-8.[Medline]

5 Csatary LK, Bakacs T. Use of Newcastle disease virus vaccine (MTH-68/H) in a patient with high-grade glioblastoma. JAMA 1999;281:1588-9.[Free Full Text]

6 [Position of the Scientific Medical Council on the antitumor studies conducted in Hungary on the Newcastle disease virus.] Orv Hetil 1998;139:2903-5.[Medline]



             
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