Treatment may fuel cancer's spread, study finds

Treating cancer with surgery, chemotherapy or radiation may sometimes cause tumors to spread and U.S. researchers said on Thursday they may have nailed down one of the causes -- a compound called TGF-beta. Tests in mice show that using the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin or radiation both raised levels of TGF-beta, which in turn helped breast cancer tumors spread to the lung. But using an antibody to block TGF-beta stopped the process, Dr. Carlos Arteaga and colleagues at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee reported. Developing drugs that block TGF-beta might help prevent cancer from recurring, Arteaga's team reports in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Cancer experts have wondered if the so-called primary tumor -- the first and biggest tumor -- might somehow suppress the growth of other tumors, and that removing or destroying the first tumor might allow other, undetectable, tumors to then grow. TGF-beta, which is involved in both the growth and suppression of tumors, may hold part of the answer, Arteaga's team said.

Bonnie - this is interesting. However, I would venture to say that it is not the "answer." One reason I have always been of the opinion that with slow growing cancers, such as prostate, surgery should be a last resort. I have seen too many times that soon after the surgery, the cancer has spread somewhere else.

As we have urged time and time again, prevention is the key to reducing your cancer risk. Step number one for cancer prevention is to drastically reduce or eliminate sugar consumption.