Amid research projects to find a cure for cancer, more and more studies are supporting the belief that some foods, including those with vitamin A, may help reduce the risk of getting cancer.
"Cancer rises from one cell that was originally normal and became altered and changed into an abnormal cell," Rhea Rosa, oncology clinical nurse specialist at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said. "These cells lose characteristics and express abnormal characteristics. As a result, you have a change in the cell and the way it looks and grows," Rosa said.
Cancer can spread one of three ways. "It can spread through local spread, through blood circulation, and through the lymphatic system," Rosa said. When cancer spreads locally, it is only affecting the narrowly confined region around which the cancer formed.
"Eating certain foods can help prevent cancer," Rosa said. "There is documentation stating that there are certain foods that you can eat that either increase or decrease a person's risk of getting certain forms of cancer."
Other studies have shown that eating certain nutrients, like vitamin A, can help lower the risk of cancer.
"Vitamin A is a natural substance in our body," Catharine Ross, professor of nutrition, said. Our bodies take in vitamin A on a daily basis, since it is in our diets. Foods rich in vitamin A include green, leafy vegetables and yellow and orange fruits and vegetables.
"If you would take a salt shaker and shake a small amount of salt in your hand, that is pretty much all of the vitamin A intake your body needs," Ross said.
Ross suggests eating optimal amounts of vitamin A. Vitamin A can be found in common foods including carrots, sweet potato, papaya, mango, and spinach. Once the vitamin A is consumed, protein binds the vitamin A, which then transports it into the body. This eventually converts itself into retinoic acid, Ross said.
Retinoic acid is a derivative of vitamin A. Ross defined retinoic acid as "the activated form of vitamin A."
Ross dedicates her research to studying how vitamin A in the body converts itself into retinoic acid, which can be mass-produced into a pharmaceutical drug that helps treat cancer. Ross said our body makes controlled amounts of retinoic acid, so in order to use it as a treatment option, the patient must take it in the form of a drug.
Retinoic acid can also be used as a treatment option in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APL). APL is one of seven subtypes of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), where there is a malignancy of the bone marrow and an excess of immature cells called promyelocytes.
APL is a "genetic abnormality that is fairly rare," David Ungar, associate professor of pediatrics, said.
Although anyone can be infected with APL, the average age of patients is late teens to early 30s. Ungar added, "adults are more likely than children to become infected with this disease."
Gary Lewis, clinical pharmacist at Geisinger Medical Center, said, "It is common among all ethnicities and is equally common among males and females."
Like any drug, retinoic acid does have some side effects. It can cause retinoic acid syndrome, which is a lung problem that can be readily treated with steroids. Vesanoid, which is the technical term for the drug form of retinoic acid, causes dry lips, dry skin, and shortness of breath.
Ross describes the treatment process for APL as two copies of genes.
"When you have cancer, one breaks, but the other copy is still feasible and can get appropriate nutrients and vitamins to function properly. You can use the 'good' gene for the retinoic acid supply. The remainder of the acid comes from the drug form," Ross said.
Ungar said retinoic acid causes cells to mature. "It prevents patients from getting sick from the chemotherapy treatment," he said.
"Retinoic acid in itself is not a cure," Ungar said. "The patient needs chemotherapy also."
"It is an excellent treatment for acute promyelocytic leukemia, and has dramatically improved the cure rate and survival rate for patients with this disease. It also appears to prevent recurrence of head and neck cancer in those patients that have been treated with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy," Lewis said.
"Over 90 percent of patients with APL are cured because of overall treatment of chemotherapy and retinoic acid," Lewis said. "If you're cured, you're cured, but if it would happen to relapse, another arsenic derivative can be used as treatment to cure the disease the second time around."
Many studies have tested how diet and exercise can lower the risk of cancer. Megan Byrnes, (junior-journalism), says she does not take cancer prevention studies seriously because she doubts she will learn anything new.
"I don't ever really think about eating certain things for cancer prevention, because it seems like every illness can be prevented the same way--through eating a healthy diet and exercise," she said. "As long as people try to be healthy, it lowers their risks altogether, rather than only eating one thing to prevent a disease."
Lucas Franchi (senior-history)"I'm not in the best shape so I try to eat things that might limit my chances of getting cancer. Though it seems like everything we do today can cause some kind of cancer, I stay away from the big things like smoking and eating fatty foods," Franchi said.
