A new study in animal models shows that the presence of a cancer tumor alone can lead to cardiac damage, and suggests the culprits are molecules called free radicals interacting with specific cells in the heart.
Tumors in mice and fruit flies led to varying degrees of cardiac dysfunction — particularly a decrease in the heart’s blood-pumping capabilities.
Adding specific types of antioxidants to food consumed by fruit flies with tumors reversed the damage to their hearts — a finding suggesting that harm caused by free radicals was the likely link between cancer and cardiac dysfunction.
“Cancer becomes a systemic disease. It’s not just a tumor doing one thing,” said co-lead author Shubha Gururaja Rao, assistant professor of pharmacology at Ohio Northern University and an adjunct faculty member in physiology and cell biology at The Ohio State University.
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