Antioxidants Enhance Cancer Cell Growth, Not Prevent It, New Study

Antioxidants are mistaken heroes, thought to be cancer fighters. However, a recent study showed that they actually help, not fight cancer cells, making them grow. This is contrary to the earlier viewpoint that they help to prevent cancer, strengthening what related studies have discovered---that they cause, not contravene cancer.

Investigating the antioxidant supplement, N-acetylcysteine (NAC) scientists saw that they influence melanoma in mice. By giving the mice NAC for 80 days, they discovered that it doubled the number of tumors at the end of the experiment. They made the tumours spread to the lymph nodes, but those mice that did not get the NAC did not expand their tumours, according to Live Science.

Scientists also checked how human melanoma cells that are grown in the lab would react to NAC as well as another antioxidant, vitamin E, which is considered to fight cancer. After exposing the melanoma cells to the antioxidants, the researchers found that the cancer cells spread quickly to the other tissues, compared to cells that were not exposed to them.

"It is not far-fetched to propose that antioxidants could increase [the spread of cancer] in melanoma patients," study author Martin Bergo from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden told Live Science. "Therefore, we would recommend people who have been diagnosed with malignant melanoma to avoid antioxidant supplements."

Earlier studies have shown the same kinds of results---that antioxidants increase the growth of lung cancer cells in mice, even as Vitamin E enhanced the risk of prostrate cancer in healthy men by 17 per cent.

Does this mean that people should avoid antioxidants altogether? Ekaterina Dadachova, radiology professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who was outside the team, pointed out that supplements show the presence of more antioxidants than natural foods.

"One would have to eat several pounds of vitamin-E-containing food in order to reach the level that would be in one supplement tablet," she said, adding that it is safe to eat natural food that contains antioxidants.

However, Dr. Vadim Gushchin at the Mercy Medical Center, who was also not part of the research team, agreed that the link between cancer and antioxidant supplements is still not completely established, and would require much more study.

The study was published in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.