USC (US) — Cancer in animals appears less resilient, judging by a study that found chemotherapy drugs work better when combined with cycles of short, severe fasting.Even fasting on its own effectively treated a majority of cancers tested in animals, including cancers from human cells.The study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, found that five out of eight cancer types in mice responded to fasting alone: Just as with chemotherapy, fasting slowed the growth and spread of tumors.Straight from the SourceRead the original studyDOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003293And without exception, “the combination of fasting cycles plus chemotherapy was either more or much more effective than chemo alone,” says senior author Valter Longo, professor of gerontology and biological sciences at the University of Southern California.For example, multiple cycles of fasting combined with chemotherapy cured 20 percent of mice with a highly aggressive type of children’s cancer that had spread throughout the organism and 40 percent of mice with a more limited spread of the same cancer.No mice survived in either case if treated only with chemotherapy.Only a clinical trial lasting several years can demonstrate whether humans would benefit from the same treatment, Longo cautions.Results from the first phase of a clinical trial with breast, urinary tract, and ovarian cancer patients, conducted at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and led by oncologists Tanya Dorff and David Quinn, in collaboration with Longo, have been submitted for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Cancer Oncologists.The first phase tests only the safety of a therapy, in this case whether patients can tolerate short-term fasts of two days before and one day after chemotherapy.“We don’t know whether in humans it’s effective,” Longo says of fasting as a cancer therapy. “It should be off limits to patients, but a patient should be able to go to their oncologist and say, ‘What about fasting with chemotherapy or without if chemotherapy was not recommended or considered?”In a case report study with self-reported data published in the journal Aging in 2010, 10 cancer patients who tried fasting cycles perceived fewer side effects from chemotherapy.Safety issuesLongo stresses that fasting may not be safe for everyone. The clinical trial did not enroll patients who already had lost more than 10 percent of their normal weight or who had other risk factors, such as diabetes
Futurity.org – Fasting slows spread of cancer
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Futurity.org – Fasting slows spread of cancer