Fasting may help cancer treatment, study finds
Baku, September 14 (AZERTAC). New research, involving laboratory mice, suggests chemotherapy drugs work much better when they are preceded by brief periods of fasting.
Cancerous tumours, made up of millions of rapidly dividing cells, are essentially big energy hogs.
“They need to burn lots of energy just to stay alive,” explains the senior researcher, Valter Longo at the University of Southern California.
So cutting off their source of nourishment can put them in an extremely vulnerable position, he added.
For the study, some of the mice received no food for two days before chemotherapy. They were given only water to prevent dehydration. As a result of fasting, blood glucose levels dropped by 50 per cent. What’s more, there was a 70-per-cent plunge in Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1) - one of several key ingredients required for tumour growth.
Normal healthy cells can tolerate brief periods when nutrients are in short supply. They essentially enter a dormant state, similar to hibernation, Dr. Longo said.
But cancer cells, programmed for unrelenting growth, no longer have the capacity to rest, and they begin to shows signs of collapse.
A blast of chemotherapy, when they are in this weakened state, appears to push some tumours over the edge, according to the findings published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Fasting can cause a drop in blood pressure, headaches and other adverse reactions. And if fasting lasts too long, the patient’s immune system may suffer and give the cancer the upper hand once more. So, medical teams will have to closely monitor patients involved in clinical trials. “It would be very dangerous for patients to start doing this on their own,” he warned.
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