An important study just published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention adds to the  evidence that supplementation can be helpful rather than an impediment to oxidizing therapies. The authors set out to address a concern that has persisted in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary:

“Antioxidants may protect normal cells from the oxidative damage that occurs during radiotherapy and certain chemotherapy regimens; however, the same mechanism could protect tumor cells and potentially reduce effectiveness of cancer treatments. We evaluated the association of vitamin supplement use in the first 6 months after breast cancer diagnosis and during cancer treatment with total mortality and recurrence.”

They evaluated 4,877 women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in Shanghai, China, between March 2002 and April 2006 for the correlation between supplement use and breast cancer total mortality and recurrence. Women were interviewed approximately 6 months after diagnosis and followed up by interviews and records. What did the data show?

“Vitamin use shortly after breast cancer diagnosis was associated with reduced mortality and recurrence risk, adjusted for multiple lifestyle factors, sociodemographics, and known clinical prognostic factors. Women who used antioxidants (vitamin E, vitamin C, multivitamins) had 18% reduced mortality risk and 22% reduced recurrence risk. “

Interestingly, in this study…

“The inverse association was found regardless of whether vitamin use was concurrent or nonconcurrent with chemotherapy, but was present only among patients who did not receive radiotherapy.”

The data were sufficient for the authors to conclude:

“Vitamin supplement use in the first 6 months after breast cancer diagnosis may be associated with reduced risk of mortality and recurrence…Our results do not support the current recommendation that breast cancer patients should avoid use of vitamin supplements.”

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It’s distressing when a patient’s oncologist refuses to recognize that their chemotherapy or radiation treatments can cause cognitive dysfunction as a serious side-effect. As stated in this paper published recently in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet: “Treatment-induced CNS [central nervous system] toxicity remains a major cause of morbidity in patients with cancer…subtle changes such as progressive cognitive dysfunction are increasingly reported after radiotherapy…or chemotherapy.“ Everybody needs a strategy for brain health, all the more so with these demanding interventions.

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This meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Cancer evaluates 33 studies including 2,446 subjects to evaluate “the effects of concurrent use of antioxidants with chemotherapy on toxic side effects…This review provides the first systematically reviewed evidence that antioxidant supplementation during chemotherapy holds potential for reducing dose-limiting toxicities.”

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The National Cancer Institute is giving lip service to “personalized oncology”, while tumor cell culture chemosensitivity testing for optimizing chemotherapy has languished in a backwater. See this brief report by Dr. Ralph Moss of Cancer Decisions.

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Here we have a report on the increase in effectiveness of cisplatin chemotherapy when combined with high-dose antioxidants and fish oil. This is especially interesting in light of the (unproven) assumption by many oncologists  that antioxidants may interfere with chemotherapy.

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