Got Gliomas? Don’t Eat (for a bit)

According to an article posted on http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com,   Valter D. Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, Davis, School of Gerontology, and his colleagues have published results of a new study which shows that a controlled fasting period lasting no more than 48 hours improved the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation therapy in mice with gliomas. (If you don’t know what gliomas is, be happy that you don’t.)

In previous research, Longo's team showed that short-term fasting made cancer cells vulnerable to the toxic effects of chemotherapy while protecting healthy cells. In the new study, the investigators tested the effect of starvation on glioma cells by depriving mice of food for 48 hours prior to radiotherapy or prior to chemotherapy with temozolomide, the standard therapeutic agent used after attempted surgical resection of glioma.

Compared with mice that underwent fasting alone or radiation alone, more than twice as many mice receiving both interventions survived to the end of the trial period.

Here’s a link to the OncologyNurseAdvisor.com posting: http://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/short-term-fasting-enhances-brain-tumor-treatment/article/262007/

And here’s a link to the abstract: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044603