Ketogenic low-carb diet slows brain cancer growth in mice

Ketogenic low-carb, high-fat diet could be useful in brain cancer - at
least in mice - according to the new Boston College study. Its press
release is on the web page

BC biologists identify alternative brain cancer treatment
High-fat, low-carbohydrate diet significantly slows tumor growth and
enhances health in mice
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/bc-bbi021907.php

Excerpts:

"... The biologists found that KetoCal, a
commercially available high-fat, low-carbohydrate
diet designed to treat epilepsy in children, can
significantly decrease the growth of brain tumors in
laboratory mice. Moreover, the diet significantly
enhanced health and survival rates relative to mice
in control groups who consumed a standard low-fat,
high-carbohydrate diet.

The findings were based on a study published this
week in the online journal Nutrition & Metabolism.

"KetoCal represents a novel alternative therapy for
malignant brain cancer," said Boston College Biology
Professor Tom Seyfried, who conceived and supervised
the study. "While the tumors did not vanish in the
mice who received the strict KetoCal diet, they got
significantly smaller and the animals lived
significantly longer. And compared to radiation,
chemotherapy and surgery, KetoCal is a relatively
inexpensive treatment option."

[...]

Malignant brain cancer is one of the most lethal
types of cancer in adults and is the second leading
cause of cancer death in children. Many current ways
of treating the disease fail to provide long-term
management because they ineffectively target tumor
cells and harm the health and vitality of normal
brain cells.

The KetoCal diet gets around this dilemma by
essentially starving the brain tumor cells of the
sugary molecules on which they rely for growth and
survival. Because of its special composition, the
diet deprives the tumor cells of the glucose they
need; at the same time, the diet provides normal
brain cells with ketones, a class of organic
compounds they can metabolize effectively but the
tumor cells cannot. ..."

The reference of the study:

The calorically restricted ketogenic diet, an effective alternative
therapy for malignant brain cancer
Weihua Zhou, Purna Mukherjee, Michael A Kiebish, William T Markis,
John G Mantis, Thomas N Seyfried
Nutrition & Metabolism 2007, 4:5 (21 February 2007)
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/4/1/5/abstract
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-4-5.pdf


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Matti Narkia