As previously mentioned on this blog, glutamine has been advocated as a supplement for cancer patients, but it's still a controversial subject. On the one hand there is some laboratory evidence that supplemental glutamine can boost the immune response of patients, it can improve anti-oxidant status in normal cells but not tumour cells and has had some clinical use already. On the minus side it is known that glutamine is a prime food for tumour cells - probably second only to glucose. So, the question is does taking glutamine help the patient or the tumour? For the moment there's no clear answer to this.
Glutamine is an essential amino acid, but an article on Anticancer.org.uk reports on a new study of a different amino acid - arginine. In this study supplemental arginine is shown to partially reverse the suppression of the immune system invoked by glioblastoma (brain cancer) tumours. It looks like an interesting piece of work that's worth following up.
The article is worth a read: http://www.anticancer.org.uk/2011/11/arginine-glioblastoma-and-immune-system.html
