Antioxidants might expedite the progression of lung cancer, a new study suggests.
This finding, discovered by a team of researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, reverses previous notions that antioxidants can stop up the development of cancer.
According to a report by Medical News Today, scientists made the discovery after analyzing tumor growth in two groups of mice that had lung cancer. In one of the groups, mice were given extra doses of antioxidants - vitamin E and acetylcysteine - with their meals. The portions administered were equivalent to the amount of vitamins a human being would get from multivitamins. The other group didn't get any extra antioxidants.
The mice who were given extra vitamins had three times the number of tumors as the mice who didn't receive any. Additionally, the mice died twice as quickly as the mice which weren't given vitamins. The tumors in the antioxidant-heavy mice were also considerably larger.
According to Professor Martin Bergo, who led the study that was recently published in Science Translational Medicine, antioxidants make contact with free radicals (atoms or molecules with an open electron shell) which can damage cells - a process that could contribute to cancer's growth.
"When the antioxidants attack reactive oxygen radicals in the tumors, a protein called p53 is deactivated," Bergo told Medical News Today. "[This protein] has a neutralizing effect on tumors, and when it's gone the tumors can grow faster and more aggressively."
Bergo and his team later confirmed their findings with human lungs.
But co-author Professor Per Lindahl said this doesn't necessarily mean people should stop taking antioxidants altogether.
"For people who already have a small lung tumor but don't know it, there is a risk that antioxidants may speed up the progression to cancer," Lindahl told Medical News Today. "Consequently, people in obvious risk groups, such as smokers, may consider not taking extra antioxidants, but we still have no scientific support for such a general recommendation."
