A new study has shown that adding vitamin K to a therapy regimen for pancreatic and liver cancer reduces the needed dose of the drug used to treat it.
There are few effective ways of treating pancreatic cancer, and the commonly used drug called Nexavar induces painful sores in some 20 percent of patients and serious tiredness and weight loss in at least 30 percent of them, according to experts.
However, new research indicates that a combination of vitamin K1 or K2 and Nexavar produces the same level activity against the growth of cancer cells as the drug alone, but the treatment requires only half the usual dose of Nexavar resulting in a significant diminishing of the side effects.
“One of the attractions of the combination of Nexavar and vitamin K is that both of these agents are already approved for human use,” says Dr. Brian Carr, a professor of Medical Oncology at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University.
“K vitamins also have no known adult human toxicities,” he adds.
Some health practitioners recommend adding nutritional supplements containing antioxidants to ones daily diet which may help lower the risk of developing cancer.