Sahana Sitaraman in The Scientist:
Cancer cachexia, or the wasting syndrome, is a catastrophic condition that causes dramatic and involuntary loss of muscle mass, fat and weight, alongside extreme fatigue, anorexia and anemia in patients with cancer.1 This severe stress reduces the body’s ability to respond to treatments, worsening prognosis and drastically accelerating death.
“More often than not, if you have two patients that have the exact same stage of disease, pathology of disease, but one of those cancers figured out how to promote wasting in the body, [that person] will live half as long as the other person,” said Puneeth Iyengar, a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Cachexia affects approximately 50 to 80 percent of patients with cancer and is the primary cause of death in 30 percent of patients. Yet, robust remedies for the condition are lacking. “We don’t know enough about [cancer cachexia] biology. It’s a very complex problem,” Iyengar said.
More here.
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