A paper published in Science Translational Medicine may hold the key to a better future understanding of how cancers and antioxidants interact.
Some researchers have believed for a long while that taking antioxidant vitamins, which are believed to help boost cancer-fighting abilities, may actually cause some tumors to grow.
Until recently they had no inkling as to why popular supplements like vitamin E and beta carotene posed such a threat, particularly to at-risk people like smokers who may be carrying an undetected cancerous mass.
A paper published in Science Translational Medicine may hold the key to a better future understanding of how cancers and antioxidants interact.
Swedish scientists from the University of Gothenburg used mice in the early stages of lung cancer to conduct their experiments.
After injecting the specimens with varying doses of Vitamin E and a specific antioxidant, they observed that the cancerous tumors multiplied and became increasingly aggressive.
They died twice as fast as the mice that hadn’t received the supplements.
It was observed that the vitamins had inhibited the body’s natural means of combating the tumors by keeping the body’s cancer-fighting gene from taking action.
The scientists stressed that because they found this to be the case in mice, doesn’t mean it’s true in humans as well, but it is another cautionary tale about the use of supplements.
