One of the most worrying diseases worldwide is breast cancer, for which new measures are always implemented to protect possible victims, mostly women; however, it is not the only thing that is done, since scientists increasingly find new data with which it is hoped to prevent and slow down the progression of the disease. The most recent of them is related to when the patients sleep.
The new study by researchers at the Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, accidentally answered one of the questions for which there were insufficient data and that is when do tumors release cells to metastasize, that is, when they leave the original tumor they travel to other organs through blood vessels. Now, thanks to the results, it is known that there is a increased spread while people meet sleeping.
The news quickly gained relevance, because with this detail it could be attack breast cancer in a more effective way. the findings were published in the journal Naturewhere it was detailed that 30 patients and mouse models participated in this study.
“When the affected person is asleep, the tumor wakes up,” Nicola Aceto, who led the study, said in a statement.
However, they highlighted that it is not the only time of day when cells spreadalthough the big difference is that those that end in metastasis are those that occur at night. “We show that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the resting phase (sleep) are highly prone to metastasize, while CTCs generated during the active phase lack metastatic capacity,” reads the Nature publication.
With the above, the scientists explained that compared to the cells that are released during the day, those that leave the tumor when the body is resting also divide more quickly and that is why there is a greater risk of metastasis. For her part, the main author, Zoi Diamantopoulou, expressed that this research shows that:
“The escape of circulating cancer cells from the original tumor is controlled by hormones such as melatonin, which determine our day and night rhythms.”
It is important to point out that melatonin is not the only one involved, as there are other key hormones of the circadian rhythm such as testosterone and glucocorticoids, which “dictate the dynamics of CTC generation and, as a consequence, insulin directly promotes the proliferation of tumor cells in vivo, but in a time-dependent manner”.
What implications does the new finding have?
According to the recent publication, discovering that the breast cancer spreads more while patients sleep It would not only help to control the disease, but also to find a diagnosis before the disease metastasizes, since the time at which the samples are taken also influences the laboratory results, because according to what they found in the study, they obtain different results depending on the time they are analyzed.
The study also found that cancer cells from mice are more numerous compared to those from humans, because “as nocturnal animals, mice sleep during the day, which is when scientists collect most of their samples.” “.
However, this “surprising and unexpected pattern” is only the tip of the iceberg, as it remains to be seen how they can use this information to eradicate the disease in people who are already diagnosed or how to improve treatments. Regarding the latter, the statement explained that “if the doctors detect the breast cancer on time, the Patients usually respond well to treatment. However, things become much more difficult if the cancer has already metastasized.”
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