Antioxidants speed up cancer spread in mice: study

When it comes to food, moderation is the key word. Consuming large quantities of antioxidants may have deleterious effects.Patients and diet promoting industries and physicians all must share the blame. Patients, particularly the aged and the infirm expect a "sumptuous" prescription. Physicians oblige. Diet supplements which contain bioactive compounds and other antioxidants form a major part of the prescription

Metabolic reactions in tissue do cause damage at molecular level due to free radical formation. Antioxidants neutralize them and help cellular repair.But these repairs need not always be error free. A few animal studies including the present one show that antioxidants may suppress tumour suppressor genes and speed up cancer growth.

May be if one needs antioxidants, it may be consumed through antioxidant containing foodstuffs rather than direct antioxidants. I am not a specialist. These are my random thoughts!

Oh how the media loves to pick up on such fear-mongering headlines, avoid substantive journalism and leave the reader with nothing more than questions. Based on "could in fact" not "do in fact."

One big question is where the funds for the study came from. Big pharma? We can't assume there is no bias or hidden agenda to the study from the facts given in the article. And which antioxidants and in what form were they received by the people who died faster? Which older studies for very common cancers also cite the same information?

Also, only one antioxidant compound (NAC) is mentioned and it seems to have been injected rather than eaten in its natural form as part of a healthy diet. Just guessing here, but perhaps eating your blueberries and taking fish oil supplements isn't in the same league as NAC injections. There are numerous unanswered questions--the conditions and the validity of the study being one of them.

Oncologists will tell patients that turmeric doesn't do anything to help them fight cancer, but they will also tell them not to take it as it interferes with conventional treatment. So which is true? It does do something or doesn't? There is a great deal of contradictory information out there. This bit of "news" does little to inform anyone who might need the information most.

Is that so? Cancer Research UK doesn't say that.

That may be. But some oncologists do say that.

But to return to your question with a question of my own: what evidence do you have that Big Pharma funded the study? Nothing here indicates that it was.

None. But there isn't any to the contrary either. No harm in asking a question or being suspicious. Thanks for the input into US practises re supplements, wipeout. I don't live in the US and appreciate the information.

In that context, your question "So which is true? It does do something or doesn't?" is sort of meaningless, as well as being unhelpfully simplistic.

Not really. The article needs to better define the context. Hence my question. It mentions melanoma, but doesn't adequately address whether or not antioxidants (or which ones) affect other cancers. I know that authors do not write the headlines; however, the headline could be misunderstood by some readers as meaning all cancer. A lot of people only scan headlines for their "news" now-a-days.