A new imaging technique that relies on naturally occurring baking soda in the body could help pinpoint cancer earlier and quickly gauge if drugs to kill tumors are working, British researchers said on Wednesday.
The non-invasive method uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in pH -- or acidity -- in tissue that is often the hallmark of cancer and other conditions such as heart disease and strokes, said Kevin Brindle of the University of Cambridge, who led the study.
Currently there are no safe ways to measure pH levels in humans but doing so is important because tumors, for example, are far more acidic than surrounding tissue.
"You are imaging not just tissue structure but tissue function," said Brindle, whose study is published in the journal Nature. "We wanted to measure tissue pH, which is a surrogate for disease."
The researchers injected mice with a tagged form of bicarbonate -- an alkali more commonly seen in baking soda -- that occurs naturally in the body and balances acidity, Brindle said.
They used MRI to see how much of the tagged bicarbonate was converted into carbon dioxide within the tumor. In more acidic tumors, more bicarbonate is converted into carbon dioxide.
The researchers measured pH levels using an emerging technique called dynamic nuclear polarization that boosts MRI sensitivity more than 10,000 times.
The next step is testing the technique in humans in early stage clinical trials expected to start in 2009, he added in a telephone interview.
Bonnie - while this technique has only been used on mice so far, it is so significant in explaining how an overacidic host can be the cause of myriad health issues. I think the path these researchers are on is brilliant. This should be a lesson to those of us in the know that we need to do everything we can to create an acid/alkaline balance in our bodies.
No comments:
Post a Comment