Tuesday 24 March 2020

Side effects of methadone

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32060760

Safety aspects of opioid-naïve patients with high-grade glioma treated with D,L-Methadone: an observational case series.

from the abstract:

"Twenty-four patients were included. All patients were opioid-naïve and received D, L-Methadone from their general practitioners. Sixteen patients experienced side effects. The median dosage when side effects began to occur was 15.8 mg/ 24 h. Fatigue and mood changes were reported most frequently (14 of 24 patients). Five patients had severe side effects related to relatively high doses. In all cases, symptoms resolved after cessation or dose reduction. Our results show that D/L M intake lead to frequent occurrence of side effects in opioid-naïve patients especially when not handled with caution and close supervision. Patients, their relatives, their GPs and neuro-oncologists need to be informed about the broad spectrum of side effects in order to thoroughly counsel glioma patients."

Saturday 14 March 2020

New Research: High fat (keto) diet accelerates glioblastoma growth

Hi all,

Just popped up on my news feed is this paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982116v2, which suggests that the high-fat 'keto' diet (which I know many people are taking in an attempt to limit tumour growth) may actually be counterproductive and speed glioblastoma growth. Here's the lay summary:

"Consumption of a high-fat diet (HFD) accelerates glioblastoma (GBM) by inhibiting the production and signaling of the tumor-suppressive metabolite hydrogen sulfide (H2S)"
**Note that this a 'pre-print' article that has not yet been certified by peer review.

I would be interested to hear people's opinions.