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Research Paper|Volume 1, Issue 12|pp 988—1007

Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report

Fernando M. Safdie1,6, Tanya Dorff2,3,6, David Quinn2,3, Luigi Fontana4, Min Wei1, Changhan Lee1, Pinchas Cohen5, Valter D. Longo1
  • 1Andrus Gerontology Center and Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
  • 2University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
  • 3University of Southern California Norris Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
  • 4Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Science. Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University School of Medicine. Division of Nutrition and Aging. Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
  • 5UCLA Dept. of Pediatric Endocrinology, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
  • 6These authors contributed equally to this work
Received: December 22, 2009Accepted: December 30, 2009Published: December 31, 2009
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100114

Copyright: © 2009 Safdie et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Short-term fasting (48 hours) was shown to be effective in protecting normal cells and mice but not cancer cells against high dose chemotherapy, termed Differential Stress Resistance (DSR), but the feasibility and effect of fasting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy is unknown. Here we describe 10 cases in which patients diagnosed with a variety of malignancies had voluntarily fasted prior to (48-140 hours) and/or following (5-56 hours) chemotherapy. None of these patients, who received an average of 4 cycles of various chemotherapy drugs in combination with fasting, reported significant side effects caused by the fasting itself other than hunger and lightheadedness. Chemotherapy associated toxicity was graded according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The six patients who underwent chemotherapy with or without fasting reported a reduction in fatigue, weakness, and gastrointestinal side effects while fasting. In those patients whose cancer progression could be assessed, fasting did not prevent the chemotherapy-induced reduction of tumor volume or tumor markers. Although the 10 cases presented here suggest that fasting in combination with chemotherapy is feasible, safe, and has the potential to ameliorate side effects caused by chemotherapies, they are not meant to establish practice guidelines for patients undergoing chemotherapy. Only controlled-randomized clinical trials will determine the effect of fasting on clinical outcomes including quality of life and therapeutic index.