Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study
Interesting study with, as always, a lot of caveats. The most we can take from this is that it&#x27;s worth to study more, the effect is existing but not extreme.<p>I don&#x27;t get the submitted title here claiming that it protects from side effects. The study does not mention this at all, just that the side effects are similar despite omission of dexamethason in the fasting arm of the trial - it increases appetite, so makes sense to omit it if you want any reasonable compliance rate.<p>As with any fasting and dieting study, compliance is moderate at best. In this study, only 33% of patients were compliant for at least 4 cycles of chemotherapy, out of 12 cycles total. Most of them were compliant with at least once cycle though.<p>Overall, we need some more research on this in a larger trial. This paper is a call for funders to do just that - the trial ended prematurely due to needing to include more patients but there was a lack of funding to do so.<p>I&#x27;m currently doing research on a similar patient population, so open to answer any questions.