What is the impact of malnutrition in cancer patients and how can it be treated?

The word of the expert

"Cancer is associated with progressive loss of lean body mass, especially skeletal muscle and this depletion is strongly associated with morbidity and mortality. Muscle wasting can be multifactorial, involving cancer- and treatment-associated effects. The efficacy of dietary intervention to support muscle maintenance or gain depends on the muscle's intrinsic capacity for anabolism, the quality and quantity of dietary protein supply, endocrine environment and level of contractile activity. Available evidence suggests that patients' usual diet may not contain adequate protein. Provision of amino acids, sufficient to considerably elevate circulating leucine concentrations concurrent with other amino acid and nutrient availability, does result in significant acute stimulation of protein anabolism in patients with cancer, and this occurred in spite of weight loss, inflammation and advanced cancer stage. Systemic therapy-related limitation to muscle anabolic potential is a concern, and cancer nutrition therapy requires optimization to overcome these effects."

Professor Vickie Baracos (University of Alberta, Canada)