from the hope-this-passes-scrutiny-in-people dept.
A combo of fasting plus vitamin C is effective for hard-to-treat cancers, study shows:
Scientists from USC and the IFOM Cancer Institute in Milan have found that a fasting-mimicking diet could be more effective at treating some types of cancer when combined with vitamin C.
In studies on mice, researchers found that the combination delayed tumor progression in multiple mouse models of colorectal cancer; in some mice, it caused disease regression. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.
"For the first time, we have demonstrated how a completely non-toxic intervention can effectively treat an aggressive cancer," said Valter Longo, the study senior author and the director of the USC Longevity Institute at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and professor of biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "We have taken two treatments that are studied extensively as interventions to delay aging -- a fasting-mimicking diet and vitamin C -- and combined them as a powerful treatment for cancer."
The researchers said that while fasting remains a challenging option for cancer patients, a safer, more feasible option is a low-calorie, plant-based diet that causes cells to respond as if the body were fasting. Their findings suggest that a low-toxicity treatment of fasting-mimicking diet plus vitamin C has the potential to replace more toxic treatments.
Journal Reference
Maira Di Tano, Franca Raucci, Claudio Vernieri, et al. Synergistic effect of fasting-mimicking diet and vitamin C against KRAS mutated cancers [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16243-3)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @05:40AM (2 children)
In "Nature Communications"? I hear Nature trying to communicate with you! It is saying that SoylentNews is full of dotardly hypochondriacs who keep passing crap like this on to the front page. All the while ignoring the results from the total cessation of food therapy, that resulting in 100% not dying of cancer! Snake oil!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @07:30AM
Nature Communications is one of the main open access journal in the Nature Research group and publishes in the realm of the natural sciences. Not the most prestigous of journals, but well above journals like Science Stuff by Honest Achmed's Used Cars and Certificates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @08:16AM
That's an awfully weird troll. Starvation kills faster than cancer; fine. And?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @05:44AM (2 children)
Competing interests
V.D.L. has equity interest in L-Nutra, a company that develops medical food. A.N. and I.C. are inventors of three patents of methods for treating cancer by fasting-mimicking diets that were licenced to L-Nutra.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @04:31PM (1 child)
Well it doesn't matter it's a non-starter - "low-calorie, plant-based diet". Not happening.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 17 2020, @03:17AM
Yeah, as soon as I saw "plant based" I was suspicious... lessee, cancers I know about that react well to fasting are actually starved by lack of glucose. What do you get from eating plants, which is to say, carbs? Glucose.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @05:58AM (1 child)
Actually, for colo-rectal cancer, a good reaming is all you need. Never saw the Goatsecs guy with cancer, did you?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @08:41AM
You were intimately familiar with his asshole, so you should be telling us.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @12:59PM
https://xkcd.com/1217/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 16 2020, @04:31PM (2 children)
That's a study in mice, and mice react differently from primates in both reactions to fasting and in handling vitamin C. So I wouldn't read too much into it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @11:21PM
Model organism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @02:24PM
1) Mice can make their own vitamin C.
2) Mice can barely live longer than 2 years (5 years with modern medical tech). Humans probably have lots of anti-cancer mechanisms that mice don't have.