In a new study from Princeton University, researchers found that a common weight-loss diet could enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.
They found that a ketogenic diet—or high fat, modest protein and very low carbohydrate intake—synergizes with chemotherapy to triple survival time compared to chemotherapy alone in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
PDAC is a major type of pancreatic cancer. It is one of the most lethal diseases, with an average 5-year survival rate of less than 10%.
Previous evidence suggests that fasting, or diets that resemble fasting in their metabolic effects, could enhance therapy for a variety of cancers.
The ketogenic diet mimics fasting by reducing circulating glucose and depressing levels of insulin, a hormone that drives tissues and tumors to consume the sugar.
Insulin is an important promoter of cancer growth—especially in pancreatic tumors—while glucose is a critically important fuel for cancer cell proliferation.
The team’s own studies previously revealed that PDAC tumors, despite their aggressive growth, are starved of glucose, which suggested they could be especially vulnerable to additional glucose deprivation.
In the current study, the team found that the ketogenic diet alone did not affect tumor growth. But it did triple survival time when combined with chemotherapy.
Notably, while the therapeutic benefit did not depend on the immune system, only mice with intact immune systems were among the long-term survivors.
The team found that the diet decreases levels of glucose more profoundly in the tumor than in healthy tissues and that it dramatically suppresses levels of insulin.
By depriving the body of sugar, the ketogenic diet forces the body to break down fats to generate molecules known as ketone bodies that can be burned by cells to generate energy.
This could help kill cancer cells by damaging DNA, membranes and other components of cells. This, the researchers hypothesize, may enhance the antitumor effects of chemotherapy.
Their findings are now being evaluated in a clinical trial testing the benefits of a ketogenic diet in PDAC patients receiving chemotherapy.
If you care about weight loss, please read studies about common eating habit that may lead to high blood sugar, weight gain, and tea that may help you lose weight during sleep.
For more information about pancreatic cancer, please see recent studies about new method to detect pancreatic cancer, and new treatment to fight pancreatic cancer.
The study is published in the journal Med and was conducted by Joshua Rabinowitz et al.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
