Antioxidants Could Hasten Cancer Spread, Warns Study

Challenging popular notion, a new study claims that antioxidants may fuel metastasis in cancer-stricken people. The study concluded that treatment with pro-oxidative substances may be more beneficial.

It was known for some time that metastasis is an inefficient process in which most cancer cells that enter the bloodstream after branching off from the main tumor do not survive the journey. According to UPI, scientists transplanted human melanoma cells in mice and treated some of them with antioxidants. They found that more of cancer cells were able to survive in the bloodstream, compared to those in mice that were not treated with antioxidants.

"The idea that antioxidants are good for you has been so strong that there have been clinical trials done in which cancer patients were administered antioxidants. Some of those trials had to be stopped because the patients getting the antioxidants were dying faster. Our data suggest the reason for this: cancer cells benefit more from antioxidants than normal cells do," said Dr. Sean Morrison at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Though the study is restricted to mice studies, researchers suggest that cancer patients should be treated with pro-oxidants which could benefit their overall health. However anti-oxidants could benefit healthy people by protecting from damage caused by oxidizing substances produced during normal metabolic processes.

The study has been published in Nature.