Antioxidants may be spreading cancer

We all know that antioxidants have tremendous health benefits — but that may not be the case for cancer patients, and it may even be speeding their demise.

A new study has shown that antioxidants boost cancer growth in mice and alerted the medical community to the fact that while antioxidants are great for healthy people, they may be terrible for those suffering with cancer, according to a UPI report.

This is about in line with observations from other studies where trials had to be halted because patients being given antioxidants were dying at a more rapid rate.

The study, led by Dr. Sean Morrison, CRI Director and Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, means that doctors treating cancer patients may need to change their treatments right away if they involve antioxidants, and should instead prescribe the opposite: pro-oxidants.

Researchers made their findings by examining the process of metastasis, which is when cancer spreads through the blood stream to other areas of the body. The reality is that cancer cells are actually quite fragile in the bloodstream and usually die, but the study found that antioxidants seemed to be boosting their survival rates, allowing them to spread to other parts of the body and thus increasing the lethality of the disease.

If a pro-oxidant were to be prescribed, however, it could limit metastasis, the researchers believe.

These findings, which were published in the journal Nature, could have huge ramifications on the medical community and on how it views antioxidants in general. Antioxidants have often been used in cancer patients, but this new research could halt that if more research confirms this finding.