New research in cellular cultures and two different mouse models reveals that a diet high in salt reduces tumor growth by altering the function of positive immune cells.
More and more research has been pointing to the pro-inflammatory results of immoderate salt consumption.
For instance, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel diseases are only some autoimmune situations that a high salt intake can exacerbate through overstimulating immune reactions.
However, in the case of cancer, inducing a seasoned inflammatory state can be helpful in the fight against tumors. Immunotherapy has recently emerged as one of the most promising avenues for cancer treatment.
So, in this context, a team of researchers observed the effects of excessive salt consumption on tumor increase in cell cultures and unbiased mouse models.
Professor Markus Kleinewietfeld—the head of the VIB-UHasselt lab, which is a collaboration between VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) and the University of Hasselt in Belgium—led the studies group.
How excessive salt consumption inhibits tumors
The researchers carried out a mobile way of life experiment that replicated an excessive salt environment.
They found that immoderate salt inhibited the feature of a sort of cellular immune scientists called myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) each in mice cells, and human MDSCs were taken from most cancer patients.
Excessive-Salt surroundings stopped MDSCs from inhibiting different immune cells almost wholly. Previous research explains why the researchers have cautioned that MDSCs are critical in preventing the resistant machine from effectively attacking tumors.
In this study, depleting MDSCs while retaining the excessive salt surroundings reversed the inhibitory effects on tumor increase, confirming that MDSCs are critical for anticancer immunotherapy.
Also, in a mouse version of melanoma transplantation, rodents fed a food regimen excessive in salt “confirmed a notably inhibited tumor growth” compared with the manage group, explain the authors.
“Delayed tumor outgrowth became evident as early as day eleven post-injection,” they write, “due to sizable variations in tumor length between each agency at day thirteen [post-injection] and at the day of sacrifice.”
Finally, Prof. Kleinewietfeld and the group sought to reproduce those outcomes in a unique model, so they used a mouse version of lung cancer.
In this version, a food regimen high in salt “drastically delayed [lung cancer] tumor increase,” file the researchers.
“Thus,” they conclude, “[a high-salt diet] became in a position to seriously inhibit tumor growth in impartial tumor transplantation fashions.”
“However,” says the lead researcher, “future studies are needed to fully apprehend the effect and the detailed underlying molecular mechanisms to decide its therapeutic capacity for anticancer immunotherapies.”
