Prevent

Cancer

Wasting

INTRODUCTION

According to conservative estimates, 40% or more of certain cancer patients actually die from cancer wasting syndrome (a secondary condition) not from the cancer.

Wasting syndrome is a secondary condition in many disorders including cancer, HIV infection (AIDS wasting), chronic gastrointestinal and renal diseases, and surgical stress. Of these disorders, cancer has one of the highest incidences of wasting.

While loss of lean body mass in wasting syndrome is a feature common to all of these disorders, there are disease-specific differences in the mediators of the wasting process in each disorder. Therefore, it is important to identify the disease-specific pathophysiology of secondary wasting for each disorder.

Effective treatment for cancer wasting then, must address those pathophysiological mechanisms of wasting common to these disorders and those mechanisms unique to cancer.