Cancer refers to the uncontrolled growth of cells combined with malignant behavior – invasion and metastasis. It seams that the cause of the condition is a combination of genetic predisposition and the exposure to some environmental toxins. Basically, the chemotherapy drug’s functioning principle is to impair cell division (mitosis), targeting rapidly-dividing cells. The damage they produce among cells, gives chemotherapy drugs the name of cytotoxic medication.
In broad general terms, chemotherapy kills cells by means of chemical substances. In more particular terms, chemotherapy aims at destroying cancer and invasive micro-organisms that remain unaffected to other forms of treatment. The most common chemotherapy drug regimen is made up from a combination of antineoplastic medication that represents the cytotoxic standardized treatment. From a non-oncological perspective, the term chemotherapy also refers to antibiotics – this is known as antibacterial chemotherapy.
A chemotherapy drug, or better a combination of such drugs, functions by destroying cells that divide quickly. Unfortunately, these drugs also affect/attack other healthy cells that divide rapidly. The collateral casualties produced by a chemotherapy drug are cells in the hair follicles, bone marrow and digestive tract. Thus, the main side effects of chemotherapy will include hair loss, the inflammation of the digestive tract and the reduced production of blood cells.
A chemotherapy drug could also be prescribed for the treatment of other problems such as autoimmune diseases – namely rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. More modern cancer treatments known as targeted therapy use anti-cancer medication that attacks only the abnormal proteins in cancer cells.
Different classes of chemotherapy drug medication are available at present. Thus there are antimetabolites, alkylating agents, topoisomerase inhibitors, anthracyclines and several others. While all these chemicals interfere with the DNA structure, there are newer and revolutionary medicines like the tyrosine kinase inhibitors or the monoclonal antibodies that leave the nucleic acids unaffected.
These ones target a molecular abnormality in particular types of cancer such as chronic myelogenous leukemia or gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Besides these, there is also the category of drugs that modulate the tumor cell behavior without directly attacking those cells. From these so-called adjuvant therapies, the hormone treatment will be commonly used. Depending on the stage of the disease and the aim of the treatment, doctors will choose to administer one chemotherapy drug or a combination of drugs according to one or another of the existing strategies.
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