L-Arginine potentiates radiation therapy for cancer | Hacker News Reader

L-Arginine potentiates radiation therapy for cancer

news.cornell.edu

115 pointsPaulHoule22 comments

Radiation oncologist here, the radiation dose delivered (32Gy whole brain in 1.6Gy BID) with boost to tumors is highly unusual and outdated. It causes short term memory loss at a higher rate than stereotactic radiosurgery - which is the preferred standard of care for unresectable BM if the disease is limited.

Stereotactic radiosurgery regularly achieves control rates >70% without any radiosensitizers.

That said, solid work, and bravo if L-Arginine works. Next most obvious work would be to test in stereotactic radiosurgery.

What makes for a good radiosensitizer? It seems gold is pretty popular at the moment as well, so curious what properties in particular are amenable to rendering a substance a good radiosensitizer?

Thanks for sharing!

The only FDA approved radiosensitizers are chemotherapy based (i.e. platinum, taxol). Vitamin B3 (Niacin) is a weak radiosensitizer at large doses. Finally hyperthermia and increase atmospheric O2 also increase radiosensitivity.

The common pathway they are theorized to work though is increasing reactive oxygen species. More reactive oxygen species, the more DNA damage, which leads to cell kill.

Im just curious, why is a Radiation oncologist on HN?

Not op but rad oncs are a weird bunch. They get to play with cool machines and imaging and there is a natural overlap with coding and software. There are a number of medical fields like this. So I’m guessing somewhere along those lines (which is a bit like me, but my applications are less clinical!)

I felt the same way, what's an article about radiation oncology doing here on HN? :)

Ditto to the comment below. Former coder turned doctor. Radiation Oncology was a quasi natural choice (radiology and emergency medicine are also very tech heavy fields!) Still interested in coding.

If it's all about the NO and not the other effects of L-Arginine, L-Citrulline might be the superior option.

"Ingested L-arginine is first delivered to the intestines and liver where arginase, which converts L-arginine to ornithine and urea, is concentrated. In contrast, L-citrulline avoids intestinal or liver metabolism and enters the kidneys, where it is rapidly converted into L-arginine"

https://lmreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Citrulline-A...

https://lmreview.com/l-citrulline-restoring-erectile-functio...

L-Citrulline DL Malate gives you a fantastic pump in the gym.

In the body building world, it seems to be right behind all stars like creatine.

Personally I am more excited about the improved erections, as described in my sources.

Better erections, better pumps in the gym, better chemotherapy. Now that's my holy trifecta!

Disregard cancer, acquire erections.

Fun to see this here. This is actually what we're doing over at usejoymode.com. We call it a pre-workout, but for sex. Email me shane at usejoymode dot com if you want to chat.

Do your concoction have also l-taurine and ascorbic acid? It's the bomb.

Edit: oh it have all these and yohimbine, kudos!

And in the bedroom

Yes, it tastes like bile though, unfortunately.

Or just garlic, pomegranates, hawthorne, beets, etc. It's not like there is any shortage of foods that boost NO, and don't have any major safety issues associated with them.

what do these foods have?

Antioxidants that prevent NO degradation and/or nitrates/nitrites that can increase NO production.

What's NO?

anyone else on here with mixed connective tissue disease? This stuff is magic.

This is very cool. Arginine being an amino acid reminds me of the Warburg hypothesis (cancer as a metabolic disease), which seem to be the best kind of wrong: it contains some intriguing ideas. There have also been some apparently positive trials with dichloroacetic acid, originally a drug for a metabolic disease...

Oh amazing! Personally I've never heard of or used L-Arginine and know absolutely nothing about it. Not sure what other reasons there'd be for using it but yeah, glad to hear it makes radiation therapy better for cancer. Maybe there are other uses for it but I wouldn't know, I don't have any reason to know about this substance. It could do anything and I just simply wouldn't know because I don't look up random chemicals in my spare time. I have never stumbled across this chemical while googling things.

Great article.

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