[cancercured] Re: Glutamine during chemo... Good or bad??

Hi everyone. The group was very active today and I just wanted to
make sure this post didn't get lost. Does anyone have any
information on Glutamine during chemo?

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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