The Effect of Vitamin Feeding on the Growth of Cancer.

Abstract

Cramer 1 states that the removal of one or the other of the vitamins from the diet of animals with transplanted and growing tumors has little or no effect on the growth of the tumors. The animal alone suffers from the deficiency. We have noted a similar result excepting when very large doses of vitamin B are given in a diet deficient in vitamin A. Rats inoculated with the Jensen sarcoma were used for these experiments. Rats given very large doses of vitamin B in a diet deficient in vitamin A suffered a marked anemia with a rapid disappearance of the tumor in a few cases and an early death of the rats in most cases. Tumors in two men broke down with this diet much the same as with X-rays. The tumors were lip cancers metastasizing to the neck. These patients also suffered marked anemia and it was necessary to stop the treatment after a short time, not only on account of the anemia, but because of a developing parenchymatous nephritis.

Quite different from the animals, men with malignant tumors have responded more readily to small changes in the vitamin A content of the diet. A man with a melanoma arising from a birthmark on his head and a large mass of metastases on one side of his neck, recovered from his cachexia and anemia completely after six weeks, and worked hard during the next four months, maintaining his nutrition and suffering no extension of his tumor. The diet he received contained a large amount of vitamin A and a moderate amount of vitamin B. He left us at this time and a competent diagnostician thought the tumor was not malignant on account of the patient's good physical condition. He removed the tumor with eventual disaster.