Oct 16, 2015 08:46 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that antioxidants may promote cancer growth, UPI reported.

Researchers from the Children's Research Institute at the University of Texas at Southwestern found that suggests cancer cells benefit more from antioxidants than normal cells, raising concerns about the use of dietary antioxidants by patients with cancer.

"The idea that antioxidants are good for you has been so strong that there have been clinical trials done in which cancer patients were administered antioxidants," researcher Dr. Sean Morrison said in a statement. "Some of those trials had to be stopped because the patients getting the antioxidants were dying faster. Our data suggest the reason for this: cancer cells benefit more from antioxidants than normal cells do."

Researchers conducted the study in specialized mice that had been transplanted with melanoma cells from patients, The Washington Post reported. Prior studies had shown that the metastasis of human melanoma cells in these mice is predictive of their metastasis in patients. Metastasis, the process by which cancer cells disseminate from their primary site to other parts of the body, leads to the death of most cancer patients.

The team found that when antioxidants were administered to the mice, the cancer spread more quickly than in mice that did not get antioxidants.

"We discovered that metastasizing melanoma cells experience very high levels of oxidative stress, which leads to the death of most metastasizing cells," Morrison said. "Administration of antioxidants to the mice allowed more of the metastasizing melanoma cells to survive, increasing metastatic disease burden."

Healthy people who do not have cancer may very well benefit from antioxidants that can help reduce damage from highly reactive oxidative molecules generated by normal metabolism.

The findings are detailed in the journal Nature.

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