This natural sugar supplement could help fight cancer

The mannose – a nutritional supplement – that is found naturally in fruits like cranberries, can help slow tumor growth and improve cancer treatment, revealed a study.

The results showed that mannose increased the effects of chemotherapy in mice with multiple types of cancer, including leukemia, osteosarcoma, ovarian cancer, and bowel disease. It slowed tumor growth, reduced tumor size, and even increased the lifespan of some mice.

Tumors use more glucose than normal and healthy tissues. However, it is very difficult to control the amount of glucose in your body by the diet alone. The researchers found that mannose can interfere with glucose to reduce the amount of sugar that cancer cells can use.

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"Tumors need a lot of glucose to grow. Limiting their use should slow cancer progression. The problem is that normal tissues also need glucose, so we can not remove it completely from the body.

"In our study, we found a dose of mannose capable of blocking enough glucose to slow tumor growth in mice, but not so long as normal tissues were affected," said lead author Kevin Ryan, a professor. at Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute.

"This is a preliminary study, but we hope that this perfect balance will enable cancer patients in the future to receive mannose in order to improve chemotherapy without harming their patients." global health, "he added.

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For the study, published in the journal Nature, the team first examined the response of mice with pancreatic, lung or skin cancer when mannose was added to their drinking water and administered by oral route. They found that adding the supplement significantly slowed the growth of tumors and caused no obvious side effects.

To test the effect of mannose on cancer treatment, the mice were treated with cisplatin and doxorubicin, two of the most used chemotherapy drugs.

Some cells responded well to treatment, others did not. It has also been found that the presence of an enzyme that breaks down mannose in cells was a good indicator of the effectiveness of the treatment.