DHA May Help Improve Chemotherapy Outcome
Lee Swanson Research Update
A daily dose of 1.8 g of DHA also produced no adverse side-effects, according to the study published in the British Journal of Cancer.
"Our data show for the first time that a dietary intervention targeted on DHA is a feasible approach that has potential in substantially increasing survival in metastatic breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy," wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Philippe Boughnoux from the French Institute National de la Sante Et de la Recherche Medicale in Tours.
Being a phase II clinical trial, the research represents an "incentive to set up a prospective-controlled randomized trial aimed at identifying the place of dietary DHA in breast cancer treatments," added the researchers.
The new study, if supported by additional research, suggests that DHA may help improve survival by sensitizing tumors to chemotherapy, said Dr. Boughnoux and his co-workers.
The Tours-based researchers recruited 25 women with breast cancer to participate in their open-label single-arm phase II study. As part of their anthracycline-based chemotherapy (FEC) regimen women were given additional DHA (1.8 g per day) for between two and 96 months.
After an average of 31 months, Dr. Boughnoux and his co-workers found that the overall survival of women was 22 months, and reached 34 months in women with the highest DHA levels in their blood.
"Although the median time to progression (six months) and overall survival (22 months) in our study were within the frame of published data, it should be stressed that our patient population had a particularly poor prognosis, as 68% had liver metastases in addition to other sites of metastases," stated the researchers. "The median overall survival of patients having liver metastases was reported to be 14 months."
British Journal of Cancer 101:1978-1985, 2010
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Feb. 2010