A Randomised Study of Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) in Metastatic Breast Cancer

Local relapses and metastases make breast cancer a deadly disease. A major goal remains the improvement of treatment efficacy, meaning increasing toxicity to tumor tissue, without additional toxicity to non-tumor tissues. The literature indicates that DHA sensitizes breast malignant tumors, but not non-tumor tissues, to chemotherapy and to radiotherapy through a variety of mechanisms. DHA enrichment of tissues can be achieved through a dietary supplementation of DHA-containing oils, such as fish oil, both in experimental animal models or in humans. Therefore, this represents an original nutritional approach to increase the activity of anticancer treatments through an enhanced specificity toward tumor tissues.