Fasting found to reduce chemo side-effects

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A few days of fasting might help protect patients from some of the unpleasant and dangerous side-effects of cancer chemotherapy, researchers reported on Tuesday.

They said mice given a high dose of chemotherapy after fasting thrived while half of a group of well-fed mice died, they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers stressed that people should not try this on their own yet but said the findings might lead to a way to use chemotherapy to more effectively kill tumors while sparing healthy cells.

"The clinicians tell me that if it works everybody will do it," said Valter Longo of the University of Southern California, who led the study.

People say "they are miserable after they get the chemo and they lose weight because they don't want to eat after they get the chemo."

His lab is preparing to test the idea in humans.

Longo and colleagues first tested yeast cells, then human cells in lab dishes. They found healthy cells starved of nutrients survived the ravages of chemotherapy -- but not cancer cells.

"In theory, it opens up new treatment approaches that will allow higher doses of chemotherapy. It's a direction that's worth pursuing in clinical trials in humans," cancer researcher Pinchas Cohen of the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.