Can antioxidants make cancer worse?

Can antioxidants make cancer worse?

The work, conducted in mice, shows that antioxidants can change cells in ways that fuel the spread of malignant melanoma—the most serious skin cancer—to different parts of the body. The progression makes the disease even more deadly.

Are antioxidants good for skin cancer?

Studies have shown that substances called antioxidants, including vitamins and other nutrients, may help fight off free radicals and prevent the damage they do that can cause skin cancer.

Can antioxidant supplements be harmful?

Antioxidant supplements are commonly considered healthy but can be problematic when taken in excess. They may decrease exercise benefits and increase your risk of certain cancers and birth defects. Generally, it’s much better to get the antioxidants your body needs through a healthy diet.

Do antioxidants protect cancer cells?

Can antioxidant supplements help prevent cancer? In laboratory and animal studies, the presence of increased levels of exogenous antioxidants has been shown to prevent the types of free radical damage that have been associated with cancer development.

How do antioxidants stop cancer?

Antioxidants can play a role in cancer prevention. Antioxidants work by tracking down free radicals and neutralizing their harmful effects. That helps keep more of the body’s cells healthy and less susceptible to becoming cancerous.

Do antioxidants stop cancer?

Antioxidant supplements likely aren’t worth it. But there’s no evidence that antioxidant supplements can prevent cancer or other diseases. In fact, very high doses of certain antioxidants may actually increase the risk of some cancers.

Is it dangerous to take antioxidants for cancer?

Martin Bergö, Ph.D., of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said he was extremely concerned with the aggressive marketing of antioxidants to cancer patients. The data strongly suggest that using antioxidants “could be really dangerous in lung cancer and melanoma, and possibly other cancers,” he said.

How are antioxidants used in the treatment of melanoma?

When the researchers added NAC or a form of vitamin E to cultured human melanoma cells, they again showed that the antioxidants improved the cells’ ability to migrate and invade a nearby membrane. Additional evidence surfaced pointing to the danger of antioxidants new classes of free radical generating therapies.

Are there any clinical trials on antioxidant supplementation?

To date there have been nine clinical trials worldwide on antioxidant supplementation and cancer prevention and the results have been surprisingly mixed. In most cases, supplementation had no impact on the risk for a variety of cancers. However, in some studies antioxidant supplementation actually increased cancer risk.

How are antioxidants used to treat prostate cancer?

So what this study suggests, is that in high doses, antioxidants may actually help protect the cancer cells by turning off the p53 cancer sweeper, which then enables the cancer to continue to grow. Now to be clear – this study studied the effect of antioxidant supplements, not foods containing antioxidants, on increased cancer risk.