Med Hypotheses. 1996 Aug;47(2):111-5. |
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A new cancer hypothesis.
Zajicek G.
H. H. Humphrey Center for Experimental Medicine and Cancer Research, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel. Gershom@md2.huji.ac.il
Despite intensive efforts to cure breast cancer, treatment generally fails, as
evidenced by the age-adjusted mortality rate for breast cancer. For 60 years,
breast cancer mortality remained virtually constant. As treatment failed to improve
the life prospect of the average patient, it is based on false premises, e.g.
Halsted's hypothesis, according to which the tumor is the only threat to the
patient. Yet there is more to cancer than just the tumor. Two hallmarks of
cancer, cachexia, and paraneoplasia, are usually ignored, since it is assumed
that they are caused by the tumor. But what if it is the other way round, and
cancer is first of all a cachexia accompanied by a tumor? At least this could
explain why, in most cancers, treatment fails. Cancer is a chronic systemic
disease with local manifestations like arteriosclerosis, which is also systemic
and manifested solely by its local manifestations, e.g. stroke and myocardial
infarction. In the same way as treatment of an ailing heart does not cure the
underlying arteriosclerosis, tumor removal does not cure cancer, as it is
'metabolically' systemic. It is proposed here that carcinogens deplete a vital
substance and induce a metabolic deficiency that ends in cachexia. In order to
survive, the organism grows a protective organ-the tumor-that replenishes the
missing substance. During the preclinical phase of cancer, deficiency is slight
and compensated only by a minute tumor. With time, it gets worse and the tumor
has to grow more and more in order to make up for the loss, causing pain and
secondary damage to vital functions. The patient seeks help and the disease
starts its clinical course. When deficiency worsens, the patient becomes
cachectic and dies. Such a metabolic relationship exists in pernicious anemia,
which illustrates how a tumor might be protective. Cancer is viewed here as
pernicious cachexia induced by the loss of a vital metabolite and compensated
by the tumor. Until the discovery of the missing substance, treatment ought to
preserve the tumor and alleviate its secondary manifestations.
PMID: 8869926 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]