Vitamin A may reduce pancreatitis risk during ALL treatment — ScienceDaily

Consuming a diet rich in vitamin A or its analogs may help prevent children and young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) reduce their risk of developing painful pancreas inflammation during chemotherapy treatment.

Details about this potential dietary solution to prevent a potentially life-threatening adverse event were published March 15, 2023, in Science Translational Medicine. The research team was led by Sohail Husain, MD, chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at Stanford University and Anil Goud Jegga, DVM, MRes, a computational biologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

For people with ALL, treatment with the enzyme asparaginase helps starve cancer cells by reducing the amount of asparagine circulating in the blood, which the cancer cells need but cannot make themselves. The medication, often used in combination with other…

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