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Antioxidants, once touted as a cancer preventive, may actually spur the disease's spread. Now scientists have figured out how.
Whether taken as a dietary supplement or produced by the body, antioxidants appear to help lung cancer cells invade tissues beyond the chest cavity, two studies report online June 27 in Cell. Experiments in mice and human tissue revealed that antioxidants both safeguard tumors against cell-damaging molecules and prompt the accumulation of the protein Bach1. As Bach1 piles up, tumors burn through glucose at higher rates, thus fueling the cancer cells' migration to new organs (SN: 1/9/16, p. 13).
"The results provide a new mechanism for how lung cancer cells can spread and may lead to new possibilities for treatment," says Martin Bergö, a molecular biologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm who led one of the new studies.
[...] Bergö and his colleagues had previously found that supplement doses of antioxidants accelerate primary tumor growth in mice, and clinical trials have unearthed similar results in humans. Now knowing how antioxidants exacerbate cancer, scientists may be able to undermine the mechanism with drugs that inhibit Ho1, block Bach1 production or prevent glycolysis, the glucose-guzzling process that fuels tumors. Ho1 inhibitors are already U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved to treat inherited disorders called porphyrias, and could potentially be repurposed to fight cancer.
"Understanding why some cancers metastasize and some don't is one of the biggest problems in lung cancer right now," says Roy Herbst, a medical oncologist at Yale Cancer Center.
Recognizing this newfound pathway as a "potent promoter of metastasis" could help doctors develop new treatments, identify which tumors to treat aggressively and better advise patients about taking vitamin supplements, Herbst says. "This pathway could be explored in other tumor types — this will definitely have some impact on the field."
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/antioxidants-lung-cancer-spread-prevent
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @10:31PM (10 children)
Fucking scientists should just make up their minds about what is healthy and then call it a day, instead of changing their minds every two years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @10:44PM
This isn't science... It is missing key aspects of science like replicating each others work (which is very rare but cancer research has replication rates of like 10-25% when they do check) and deriving surprising predictions about the future from your theories.
It is some other type of research that relies on NHST. NHST has been known to automatically generate conflicting and misleading conclusions for a long time. Eg see the last couple pages here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/288135 [uchicago.edu]
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:12PM
Simpleton minds waiting to be told simple answers and getting aggressive if they don't get them.
Have you considered a career in management? I hear an MBA can help on this path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:13PM
Keep smoking Lucky Strikes, my friend. 9 out of 10 doctors can't be wrong...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:38PM
Strychnine used to be given medicinally. Please take lots of it. It will cure your trollsoylentnewsitis.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:24AM (3 children)
Statistics, all too often, turn out to be the art of taking far too few variables into consideration, not controlling for other influences, spotting what appears to be a correlation without all the data and control one really needs to do that, and then asserting primacy for said apparent correlation. Often loudly.
The human body is not even close to well understood. Medicine remains an art. Nutrition remains an art. Human minds and bodies, though there's definitely a wide range of common attributes, do present with conditions that are not normal for everyone, but are normal for that individual. That makes things even harder for these outliers.
I don't blame the researchers; I just keep in mind this critical fact WRT medicine and nutrition: "We're not done yet."
Plus... there are issuances like the original food pyramid [wikipedia.org] and irresponsible pundits and companies [wikipedia.org] that make assertions that go wide and have great impact, all without any hard data at all to back them up. These are often emotionally driven, and focused on manipulating unresolved concerns in the target audience for various reasons.
It all combines to create circumstances one has to navigate carefully if you don't want to be snared in pseudo-whatever, no matter if it comes from a lawyer, a scientist or a wacky movie star. Perhaps many years from now, we'll have everything settled. But we're not even close right now. Caveat emptor. [wikipedia.org]
--
My friend said he didn't understand cloning.
I said "That makes two of us."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:16AM
Even if the post-modernist nutritionists got to the level of literally feeding you shit (and having you pay for that), I'm still waiting for that "Gallery of great nutrition masters" to open. No luck so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:54PM (1 child)
This has to have been known for at least 15 or more years. I remember discussing news about recent scientific discoveries about smoking and vitamin C levels in the lungs--I recall having this discussion on September 11th 2001, in fact, and the conversation was disrupted due to a developing news story...
Anyway, smokers were found to have greater levels of vitamin C and related vitamin compounds in their lungs--if the smokers had a diet suitable enough to provide it, of course.
It was expected that eating citrus fruit would be of a greater benefit in smokers, as the lungs appeared to be making use of the Vitamin C family of chemicals to bolster defenses. Autopsies of smokers that died of events unrelated to smoking had curiously revealed lungs that were enriched in Vitamin C and anti-oxidents related to ascorbic acid. A simple Vitamin C supplement wouldn't be enough to cover what the lungs apparently were loading themselves up with.
It wasn't known at the time (antioxident research was not quite 'mainstream' yet) that taking antioxidents when undergoing chemotherapy essentially helps the body indiscriminately, and thus the cancer and tumors, to deal with the radiation and chemical damage caused by the therpay and try to heal. Chemotherapy is supposed to kill the cancer and it also badly effects surrounding cells--it makes people feel a lot sicker than they did prior to treatment. Anything you take to make yourself feel better that does more than mask symptoms will likely, in some way, benefit the cancer's self-healing and cell division process due to cancer cells being able to make use of anti-oxidents to defend against radiation in much the same way regular body cells do. There are exceptions outside the scope of a reply, but vitamin supplements are not among those exceptions.
What was happening in the lungs was the body was indeed trying to help fight off damage caused by smoking; sometimes to even fight cancer that had not been diagnosed yet--but once radiation and chemotherpay was introduced, the body's natural actions helps cancer flourish, which is why such drastic efforts to poison the patient and use essentially space age weaponry to burn holes in people is done. Otherwise, an aggressive cancer often hijacks the system and wins if things are allowed to proceed 'naturally'.
Antioxidents can of course be used to help mitigate many health issues, including cancer, prior to anything terminal taking root... but there are situations in which the enemy can shoot you with the same silver bullets or defend itself with the same magical shields. You can't make up for a lifetime of bad eating habits, either.
I think the real problem is that there are unscrupulous people that are able to profit far too much off of ignorant people's fears of illness and age, and hopes to remain healthy and youthful. Any superfood/superfruit and so on gives you an idea of how entrenched it is that even with food, there is a magical pill that someone can take to prevent or cure everything. Notice how a lot of those superthings change over time; people start to realize the inflated cost isn't making them any younger... then the search is on for a new substance to market, or perhaps re-invent an old one by finding a study that shows something new or different.
Once some science is done by a reputable organization or group that determines a benefit, no matter how small, someone, somewhere, can be relied upon to set up podium and hire a carnival barker to start selling a snake oil version of it to people that want to believe or vaguely heard about it in the news so it must be true.
For as much of an information age that we have, I think there's a lot of ignorance. And really I can't blame anyone for not having the time to look up things--but the system is often stacked against them. Google will page rank a place with great advertising/marketing stuff for snake oil instead of the actual scientific journals or medical journals--that quite often are paywalled anyway!
It's literally cheaper in the short run to be educated by the positive benefits of a product with made up claims, on a store that sell the stuff... because of how website promotion is gamed so heavily by Google via search engine optimizations... than it is to get real information, especially since some of those scientific journals with actual, real, information... throw a sueball at anyone trying to share research work completed with tax dollars that are locked behind a subscription. So what happens is that the marketing lies end up free and promoted and reinforced due to the profit involved, and the real info is kept locked behind a paywall. Google is more than happy to promote products and sites that sell products in their results, because their business model doesnt have anything to do with keeping people informed.
Not all supplements are bad, of course--but the more hyped it is, they're trying to inform the world via marketing for a reason. Otherwise it'd be a breakthrough or at least a story reported on reputable news organizations...
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:14PM
+1 Understatement award, given as "+1 Insightful", because there is no "+1 Understated." 😊
--
The actor who played captain Kirk on TOS has
shut down his new line of ladies lingerie.
Apparently "Shatner Panties" wasn't the
best choice for a name.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:44AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:51PM
Yeah!!! I don't care how much more data you bring to the table, what is important is to be decisive, even if you are decisively ignorant!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:23PM (4 children)
You get some Joe Random who does a study of 20 people and comes up with a surprising result of "OMG! Cigarette smoking pevents cancer!". The actual results, while too small a sample to be useful, actually show smokers die of heart disease before they can develop cancer.
But guess what headline Lester Holt starts his newscast with.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:27PM (2 children)
I just wish these eggheads would make up their fucking minds. One day we get a story about the benefits, the next day we get a story about vitamins causing cancer. Its like watching news about the economy. Ever since obama one day its "the economy's roaring" and the next day "the economy's crashing." Fucking cocksuckers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:05AM
It's not a religion, and they're not priests.
Even if the corporate media likes to present findings like religious doctrine handed down by priests.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:20AM
But they are! Each one makes her/his own mind. Suggestion: start doing the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @11:40PM
Sounds like you buy into the "how much money you spend determines how reliable your conclusion are" idea. It is totally incorrect, but is something pushed to increase budgets and thus power. At best this stuff can get you incremental advancements, and the way eg NIH is run is far from "at best".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:11AM (3 children)
It's long been known that living kills. We have tons of evidence. I've given up on worrying too much, I'm going to enjoy myself with what time I have left. Certainly less that what I have under my belt, that's for sure. Coffee is good, coffee is bad, burgers are good, burgers are bad. (I'm not buying that one, burgers are always good!) Wine is good, bad and then good again. Same with beer. Vitamins... Etc.
Think I'll just live my life, within reason, and carry on...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:16AM (2 children)
You sound like a triggered sexist and racist. Just can't stand to have someone with names like Bergö and Michele doing science?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:18AM
/s
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 07 2019, @05:10AM
If Bergö and Michele were doing real science, we'd all be cool. As has been pointed out, maybe this study wasn't "real science"? Study after study passes through Soylent's purview, only to be dismissed for sample size, lack of control, and/or funding sources. I recall commenting on one story in which the "scientists" pretty openly admitted they had their preconceived ideas, and they were using the "study" to validate their ideas.
Apparently, you have issues with the names of the scientists. I submitted this story, and gave zero attention to the names of the people doing the study.
Saving grace for this particular study?
When TWO (or more) studies agree, the odds that they are right, and that their results are reproducible increases. Solitary studies are always suspect.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:27AM (5 children)
Two years from now we'll be reading that scientists have found a carbon dioxide deficit in the atmosphere and if we don't burn more fossil fuels the world will freeze in forty years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:43AM
Trolling from the book of "My ignorance is as good as your science"
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:48AM (2 children)
You jest, but half the anthropogenic CO2 that is produced disappears into biological sequestration. Tends to imply that the biosphere can handle a lot more CO2 than it has.
We ramp it up giving it all that CO2 for a century or so and then turn it off, what happens? Atmospheric CO2 will crash badly, plants will die, biosphere in turmoil, wild plans to warm the planet using mirrors, solar-powered stations to break down carbonate minerals, Al Gore flying around saying "we must burn more carbon and I need a new mansion".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @06:18AM (1 child)
Flamebait huh?
Obviously we need a -1 Heresy Mod.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @07:59AM
What we actually need is a -1 Ignorant moron mod.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:26PM
Follow the money. The original research defending tobacco use and spreading disinformation in the face of research linking tobacco use to cancers and heart disease was from the tobacco companies. Today the fossil fuel industry involves trillions of dollars worldwide. Do you really think they're going to accept the message "the whole world needs to switch to non-combustible fuels" and watch their hundred billion dollar profit cash cow get euthanized without a fight?
For a good take on it, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZB1YtQtHjE [youtube.com]
Next you're going to tell us that Venezuela needs US intervention for corruption but Honduras and Ecuador - which are far worse - do not. Hint: Honduras and Ecuador don't have massive oil reserves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @06:58AM (1 child)
What we need is anti-anti-anti-anti-oxidants. FOUR-TIMES as strong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @02:31PM