Sak Katrin
NGO Praeventio, Näituse 22-3, 50407 Tartu, Estonia.
Chemother Res Pract. 2012;2012:282570. doi: 10.1155/2012/282570. Epub 2012 Dec 20.
Chemotherapy has been used for cancer treatment already for almost 70 years by targeting the proliferation potential and metastasising ability of tumour cells. Despite the progress made in the development of potent chemotherapy drugs, their toxicity to normal tissues and adverse side effects in multiple organ systems as well as drug resistance have remained the major obstacles for the successful clinical use. Cytotoxic agents decrease considerably the quality of life of cancer patients manifesting as acute complaints and impacting the life of survivors also for years after the treatment. Toxicity often limits the usefulness of anticancer agents being also the reason why many patients discontinue the treatment. The nutritional approach may be the means of helping to raise cancer therapy to a new level of success as supplementing or supporting the body with natural phytochemicals cannot only reduce adverse side effects but improve also the effectiveness of chemotherapeutics. Various plant-derived compounds improve the efficiency of cytotoxic agents, decrease their resistance, lower and alleviate toxic side effects, reduce the risk of tumour lysis syndrome, and detoxify the body of chemotherapeutics. The personalised approach using various phytochemicals provides thus a new dimension to the standard cancer therapy for improving its outcome in a complex and complementary way.
化疗通过靶向肿瘤细胞的增殖潜能和转移能力来治疗癌症，至今已有近70年的历史。尽管在开发强效化疗药物方面取得了进展，但它们对正常组织的毒性、在多个器官系统中的不良副作用以及耐药性仍然是临床成功应用的主要障碍。细胞毒性药物会显著降低癌症患者的生活质量，表现为急性不适，并且在治疗后的数年里也会影响幸存者的生活。毒性常常限制了抗癌药物的效用，这也是许多患者中断治疗的原因。营养方法可能是帮助将癌症治疗提升到新的成功水平的手段，因为用天然植物化学物质补充或支持身体不仅可以减少不良副作用，还能提高化疗药物的有效性。各种植物衍生化合物可提高细胞毒性药物的效率，降低其耐药性，减轻毒性副作用，降低肿瘤溶解综合征的风险，并使身体对化疗药物解毒。因此，使用各种植物化学物质的个性化方法为标准癌症治疗提供了一个新的维度，以复杂且互补的方式改善其治疗效果。
