[cancercured] Glutatime during chemo... Good or bad??

I have been trying to research the impact of glutamine supplementation during chemo and have been left just plain confused. I'm hoping that ya'll can provide some insight.

There seems to be enough evidence to show that glutamine helps many people with dealing with the side effects of chemo (neuropathy comes to mind, but there are others also)

There also is evidence that many cancer patients are deficient in glutamine. The cancer needs glutamine to grow, and apparently depletes the body of a cancer patient of this amino acid. There are at least some researchers who have hypothesized that glutamine
supplementation causes cancer cells to grow more rapidly. There are other researchers who have hypothesized the opposite.

Attached is a link to a review article (it is old, but forward searches on the reference didn't get me too far)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...i?artid=1243066

Several researchers tried to come up with a chemo program that depleted the body of glutamine to starve the cancer. It didn't work, as it was too toxic.

There have been some rodent studies on glutamine, but it is hard to extrapolate to people. Some of the studies showed higher numbers of rodents supplemented with glutamine dying, but the numbers were not significantly significant.

The people studies I have found show too few numbers (like 10) to draw even preliminary conclusions.

Although minimizing side effects seems like a good thing to do, I don't want to feel better for a few months only to find out that the cancer has been fed by the cure. On the other hand, if the side effects prevent treatment or cause treatment delay and that can
be prevented, maybe a person is better off to supplement.

I tried to think of ways to try to figure out what to do in light of no data. It seems there are certain cancer centers that recommend supplementation, and others that don't. A meta analysis might work.

Or alternatively, finding out what oncs recommend what might help. I think the combined experience may point in a direction.

I am confused.

So, here are my questions
- What did your onc recommend?
- What did you do, any why?
- Any ideas on how else to try to figure out what to do?

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