Protective effects of Panax ginseng against doxorubicin-induced cardiac toxicity in patients with non-metastatic breast cancer: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial

Anthracycline-based chemotherapy increases the risk of cancer therapeutics-related cardiac dysfunction. Recently, evidences from in vitro experiments and animal studies have shown that ginsenosides may exert cardiovascular protection against cancer therapeutics-related cardiac dysfunction. Here, we aimed to evaluate this effect in a clinical situation.In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, women with non-metastatic breast cancer whose left ventricular ejection fraction was ≥ 50% were randomly assigned in 1:1 ratio to receive ginseng (1 g/day) or placebo besides standard chemotherapy. Echocardiographic measurements were performed at baseline, after the fourth, and eighth chemotherapy cycles. High-sensitive cardiac troponin I was assessed at baseline and after the 4th cycle. The primary endpoint of the study was change in left ventricular ejection fraction. Cancer therapeutics-related cardiac dysfunction was defined as a drop in left ventricular ejection fraction of ≥ 10% from baseline.Results from 30 patients were included in the final analysis (15 patients in each group). In the intervention and control groups, left ventricular ejection fraction was dropped from 62.0 ± 0.9% to 60.7 ± 1.0% (difference = -1.3 ± 1.1%) and from 63.27 ± 1.1% to 58.0 ± 1.3% (difference = -5.27 ± 0.8%), respectively (difference = 3.97%, p = 0.006) at the end of the fourth cycle of chemotherapy. After the eighth cycle of chemotherapy, the mean left ventricular ejection fraction was increased by 0.8 ± 1.3% from baseline in the intervention group, whereas the placebo group experienced a reduction of -7.3 ± 1.4% (difference = 8.1%, p-value < 0.001). None of the patients in the ginseng group in comparison to 1(6.7%, p-value = 0.5) and 5 (33.3%, p-value = 0.02) patients in the placebo group developed cancer therapeutics-related cardiac dysfunction after the fourth and eighth cycles, respectively. High-sensitive cardiac troponin I levels were not significantly different between groups.Prophylactic ginseng supplementation may protect against doxorubicin-induced early cancer therapeutics-related cardiac dysfunction and early decline in left ventricular ejection fraction in breast cancer patients.