Does green tea extract (EGCG can) reduce WBC in CLL?

[Sagarcanada]

I have read some positive things about green tea extract to treat CLL so our Hematologist said just W & W but we could not stop and search about the CLL and its alternative methods of treatment from food and tea etc. Finally, we found that EGCG is useful to reduce the WBC or postpone development symptoms so we ordered one bottle of about 150 capsules and gave it to my wife who was recently diagnosed with CLL as one capsule per day from the beginning of January. She was having 17000 WBC after two months we went for CBC and found an increased WBC to 23000. We are confused? but found it did not work for her? Still, we are continuing as one capsule per day. I am seeking a piece of advice from an expert or somebody with experience about it? While I was checking all the posts I did not find information about it so it may not advisable to give?

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Briefly, because this has been discussed many times before as you can see from the related posts:

1) You need to measure the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), not the WBC, because the WBC is the combined count of at least 5 different white blood cell types. When the WBC is relatively low like your wife's, changes in other white blood cell counts, in particular neutrophil counts, can actually give you a misleading indication about what's happening with the amount of CLL in the blood. See: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

2) The Mayo Clinic EGCG trials settled on 4 grams per day of EGCG for the phase II trial. One capsule might contain perhaps a few hundred milligrams of EGCG. So your wife might need to take around 20 capsules per day to get the 4 grams of EGCG, but she needs to be aware of the liver poisoning risk. Seven patients out of the 36 enrolled in the phase II trial were forced to discontinue their involvement due to transaminitis i.e. liver stress/possible liver damage. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

newscientist.com/article/dn...

3) Lymphocyte counts jump around considerably. See: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo... You need to look a longer term trend (which I doubt you'd see on one capsule per day). Keep in mind that only half the trial participants met ALC reduction the criteria.

4) Dr Neil Kay, one of the study authors, subsequently advised anyone with CLL, not to take green tea capsules, because due to the largely unregulated supplements industry, there's no guarantee of what's in the capsules. The Mayo Clinic study used a pharmaceutical grade ECGC product made by Mitsu Norin, which they withdrew from the market.

Neil

[Sagarcanada in reply to AussieNeil]

Thank you Neil for your answer which is very helpful.

[Lovely67 in reply to Sagarcanada]

Hi Sugarcanada, did your wife continued EGCG and what was final impact? Did her WBC reduce eventually? My WBC went up one month after taking EGCG.