Cancer cells feed on fructose, study finds

[IDemo]

Research shows the refined sugar helps cancer cells proliferate

WASHINGTON — Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38528161/ns/health-cancer/

[truedelphi]

1. there is an alternative doctor over in Italy

IIRC, who uses hydrogen peroxide to abolish cancer cells. He treats cancer as a mold, or fungus, and it does seem in many respects to act as one - it moves from the original area of contamination, even after it is cut away during surgery, it feeds on sugar. And a few other similarities.

[drm604]

8. It is not a mold or fungus.

It is your own cells that have been genetically damaged. This doctor sounds like a quack.

[Orrex]

16. +1

[NobleCynic]

11. Yeah... I'm gonna call quackery on this

If hydrogen peroxide cured cancer, we'd have figured it out the first time a cancer patient got a scraped knee or small cut.

[Warpy]

20. All cells feed on sugar

it's where they derive their energy. Noting cancer cells that have a higher fructose metabolism is significant and might be a first step to getting HFCS out of all processed foods and limiting it to items where it is indispensable, like some candies. That's good news.

Peroxide is toxic to all cells. Cancer cells are not fungi and have no similarity to them in form or function.

This guy is a quack.

[tabatha]

2. I do not eat anything sugary.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. you mean that high fructose corn syrup is not a health food like the soda companies tell us??

Maybe this will give some impetus to the death of HFCS.

Great article. Thanks.

[Igel]

5. Still not that big a deal.

HFCS is usually 55% fructose.

Sucrose--the "good sugar" that everybody prefers--breaks down to 50% fructose. It does so rather quickly, but it's not the speed that's at issue.

Now, here's the kicker: If you have a gram of HFCS it'll taste sweeter than a gram of sucrose. In other words, if you keep the amount of sugar the same as you go from sucrose to HFCS it'll probably be too sweet; if you keep the same sweetness, you'll have less sugar.

If you keep the sweetness level the same as you go from sucrose to HFCS, you almost certainly reduce the amount of fructose.

If you keep the sweetness level the same as you go from HFCS to sucrose, you'd wind up increasing the amount of fructose you're exposed to.

Critical thinking requires prior memorization of facts.

[Oregone]

6. Interesting

[izquierdista]

10. And if you use stevia,

...you'll reduce the amount of fructose to zero.

[trotsky]

13. "Critical thinking" and "facts" have NO PLACE on a Health Forum thread!

What were you thinking? HFCS is DEVIL JUICE made by ADM to KILL US ALL!

(Oh, and please don't mention that the sugar found in plain ordinary organic fruit is fructose. You'll really explode some heads then.)

[Warpy]

21. Or that table sugar is a glucose-fructose disaccharide

Limiting total intake of sugar should be the aim and getting HFCS out of processed foods is laudable. Replacing it with table sugar is not.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

4. Doesn't regular sugar hydrolyze into fructose as well?

[laconicsax]

7. Shhhhh!

This thread is about how evul fructose is. Now is not the time for "facts," it's the time for alt-med demagoguery!

[MineralMan]

9. Tut...tut...mustn't let facts cloud the Real Truth™

The Real Truth™ is all that matters, and the government wants to keep it from you. Sucrose schmucrose. That's not what it's about, you know...

[mzmolly]

12. From the article...

Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

That said fructose is found natually in many foods.

Is corn syrup fructose different than fructose found in other foods?

No, all fructose works the same in the body, whether it comes from corn syrup, cane sugar, beet sugar, strawberries, onions, or tomatoes. Only the amounts are different. For example, a cup of chopped tomatoes has 2.5 grams of fructose, a can of regular (non-diet) soda supplies 23 grams, and a super-size soda has about 62 grams.

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/fructosedangers.htm

[hedgehog]

26. Not only does a serving of a fruit or vegetable contain much less

fructose than a can of soda, but that fructose comes with fiber, vitamins and anti-oxidants. I suspect that the body handles large amounts of pure fructose differently than small amount accompanied by other chemicals.

[IDemo]

14. I had no idea fructose was so prone to cause head explosion here

It appears to occupy a place immediately adjacent to Aspartame, which has been responsible for thousands of cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in keyboard users across the internets.

I found an article which appeared to present some interesting information from reliable sources and posted it. I don't have a horse in the race for or against HFCS, but continue thinking that if it gives your blood glucose levels a boost.

Sheesh...

[LaurenG]

19. Thanks for posting

Just read around the snark and arguing.
I know I do. (It's fun if you think about it as driving a bumper car, try not to get hit and drive around the arguments).

Now I'll be sure to watch my sugar intake in all forms. Maybe I'll stick with the sugars in fruits and vegetables and skip the rest.

[applegrove]

15. Then I should be safe on aspartame ........................ LOL!

:rofl:

[wuvuj]

17. The cancer issue aside...

...all sugars contribute greatly to obesity....fructose especially.

So maybe FAT is a type of tumor....think of it as a large alien living in your body...trying to run the show? And I think that this might really be the case in a way.

It's not fat that makes you fat...it is high glycemic foods.

[The Backlash Cometh]

18. What more proof do we need?

Fructose should have been pulled from the market years ago. How many lives has it destroyed?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

22. So we should just pull food products containing fructose?

People would starve... everything has that stuff in it.

[laconicsax]

23. We need to organize to outlaw fructose-containing foods!!!

:rofl:

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

24. A crate of oranges could net you 25-to-life!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[laconicsax]

28. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

[HuckleB]

25. Some much needed perspective.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/08/fructose_and_pancreatic_cancer.php#more

"I hate science press releases.

Well, not exactly. I hate science press releases that hype a study beyond its importance. I hate it even more when the investigators who published the study make statements not justified by the study and use the study as a jumping off point to speculate wildly. True, it's not always the fault of the investigators, particularly if they don't have much experience dealing with the press, but all too often scientists fall prey to the tendency to gab glibly and give the reporter what he or she wants: Pithy, juicy quotes that relate the results to what the reporter wants them related to. It's irritating as hell, not so much because it's pure self-promotion. (After all, self-promotion is not in and of itself a bad thing) but rather because it's almost inevitably an excuse for the investigators to say what they want without peer pesky peer reviewers telling them that they should keep their remarks focused on what the evidence will support. Often these press releases lead to credulous news stories that make conclusions that aren't justified from the actual study. Sometimes an investigators' comments are taken out of context. Sometimes the investigator says something dumb. Sometimes it's all three.

...


Dr. Heany appears to be implying that high fructose corn syrum causes pancreatic cancer or somehow makes it worse and that this paper has major public health implications when it comes to cancer. It does not, at least not yet. It's possible the findings that spring out of subsequent studies spawned by this paper might have public health implications, but this paper alone is not enough to make such a bold statement. Fortunately, Heany at least has some interesting and potentially important observations to report. Unfortunately, as I guessed when I read just the news story, this study only looks at pancreatic cells in culture. On that basis alone, I would chastise Dr. Heaney for making such policy statements. There may or may not be legitimate science-based reasons to regulate the content of high fructose corn syrup in food and beverages based on their health effects, but this is nothing more than a study in which the effects of fructose were compared to glucose on pancreatic cancer cell metabolism. He didn't even include animal studies to show something like, for example, that a high fructose diet in mice would accelerate the growth of pancreatic cancer. There's nothing of the sort in this paper. It's all cell culture. So while it's an interesting study, it is not particularly strong evidence that high fructose corn syrup leads to pancreatic cancer.

...

As I mentioned before, there very well may be legitimate, science-based reasons to be worried about fructose and high fructose corn syrup. Steve Novella recently wrote a good review of the topic in which he wanted to point out that glucose and fructose are sugars, as is the main component of high fructose corn syrup. It's a high calorie, highly processed substance that has no other nutritional value other than as pure fuel. What Heaney's study doesn't really answer is just how different from the case in normal pancreatic cells is fructose metabolism in pancreatic cells or if it's even different? In the current study, HPDE6 cells, which are a cell line derived from normal pancreas cells, behaved the same as all the pancreatic cancer cell lines. Fructose supported its growth and was used primarily for ribose and nucleic acid synthesis.

..."

[Duer 157099]

27. I wonder if there's a flip-side to this equation

Like, cells that die in neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, etc) -- do they survive better/proliferate more when fed fructose compared to glucose?

It's a question worth answering.