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Nutrition Intervention During Chemotherapy

NCT01871350 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 31

Last updated 2025-09-30

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Weight loss and muscle wasting commonly occurs in patients with cancer, negatively influencing their quality of life, treatment response and survival. Weight loss has been reported as a side effect of chemotherapy treatment in cancer. Weight changes may be the consequence of energy imbalance and disturbances in protein metabolism (through different factors linked with chemotherapy), such as reduced caloric and protein intake (partly related to depression), poor treatment tolerance, hormonal alterations, systemic inflammation etc. This results in body composition modifications in favor of fat gain and/or lean body mass loss in early stage cancer and loss of both fat mass and lean mass in advanced cancer. Depletion of lean tissue in cancer patients is related to short survival, and decreased skeletal muscle mass and function may result in fatigue and inactivity, which contributes to fat mass changes and can be responsible for chemo-toxicity and increased mortality.

Gains in muscle mass are difficult to achieve in cancer unless specific metabolic abnormalities are targeted. Recently, the investigators observed that essential amino acid mixtures (EAA) are able to induce protein anabolism in patients with stage III and IV non-small cell lung cancer. Previous experimental research and clinical studies in cachectic conditions (including cancer) indicate that polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are able to attenuate protein degradation by improving the anabolic response to feeding and by decreasing the acute phase response. Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) (in combination with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)) has been shown to effectively inhibit weight loss in several disease states; however, weight and muscle mass gain was not present or minimal. Recent studies examining the effect of fish oil supplementation in relation to chemotherapy have been inconclusive but found potential beneficial effects on physical performance and increased efficacy of first-line chemotherapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

It is the investigators' hypothesis that supplementation with milk protein (containing essential amino acids) carbohydrate (CHO) mixture in combination with fish oil supplementation will target the metabolic alterations in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, attenuating the negative effects of chemotherapy on gut function, muscle mass and muscle function, and cognition; and leading to reduced toxicity from chemotherapy.

Conditions

  • Cancer Patients Receiving Chemotherapy or Chemoradiotherapy

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Daily intake for 10 weeks (+/- 2 weeks)

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Marielle PKJ Engelen, PhD · Texas A&M Univeristy

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2013-04-26
Primary Completion
2015-11-03
Completion
2015-11-03

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT01871350 on ClinicalTrials.gov