Nutritional wasting and associated body compositional change, are highly prevalent in cancer patients and impact their survival and overall prognosis post anti-neoplastic treatments and interventions. The nutritional status of the patient is one of the most important aspects in predicting how well the treatment will be tolerated, which determines the overall success of the anti-neoplastic therapy. Weight loss occurs early in the course of the disease and may develop at any time throughout the patient’s journey. Patients with head-and-neck cancer, gastroesophageal cancer, pancreatic and lung cancer are at particularly high risk of malnutrition. Malnutrition has a negative impact on outcomes and survival, including impaired quality of life, higher surgical complications, prolonged length of stay, and poorer anticancer treatment tolerance due to increased toxicity, poorer compliance, and decreased response.
Adequate nutritional therapy. in the context of other supportive multimodality interventions, helps to maintain or to regain normal nutritional and functional status. This in turn is associated with better tolerability of anticancer treatment and improved prognosis. Historically, treatment advances in cancer have predominantly focused on the introduction of new substances. The increased and prolonged use of such regimens may expose the patient to the prolonged risk of nutritional impairment and progressive depletion of body stores. Counteracting such depletion with nutrition represents a major supportive goal in modern oncology care, as compromised nutritional status or a high risk of malnutrition is a key prognostic factor for later treatment success or failure. Of note, maintenance of anabolic competence during anticancer therapy needs to be valued and explored to optimise all possibilities of an effective response to nutritional and multimodality supportive therapy. Surprisingly, nutritional intervention is still inconsistently implemented in oncologic practice. This is partially due to lack of medical education in the context of nutrition in chronic catabolic conditions such as cancer as well oncologist perception that there is a paucity of solid evidence on the benefits of nutritional therapy from randomized controlled trials.
This Research Topic welcomes novel interdisciplinary, multimodality research aimed to understand optimal nutrition and supportive body composition interventions to prevent, revert, and treat nutrition wasting in different cancer types along the cancer care continuum. We welcome studies on interventions to promote anabolism and stop catabolism, and also to optimize body composition and modulate treatment associated dose-limiting toxicity. We also aim to receive studies on adjuvant nutrition intervention to improve oncologic treatment tolerance and efficacy. Survival and quality of life are mandatory outcomes that we wish to focus on with this topic.
We welcome original research articles and systematic reviews of the literature on themes such as but not limited to:
- Research on nutritional status, body composition, clinical, physical, and biochemical parameters and their evolution throughout the disease course of different cancers
- Nutritional interventions, their efficacy, and their impact on patient outcomes
- Metabolic and nutritional alterations that influence patient recovery and survival outcomes
- Intervention studies on Tailored nutritional interventions
- Multimodal interventions and outcomes
- Concept of ''anabolic competence'' in context of oncologic patient
- Dose-limiting toxicity
- Randomised controlled studies
- Prospective interventional studies
- Analytical, descriptive, and cross-sectional studies
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
Nutritional wasting and associated body compositional change, are highly prevalent in cancer patients and impact their survival and overall prognosis post anti-neoplastic treatments and interventions. The nutritional status of the patient is one of the most important aspects in predicting how well the treatment will be tolerated, which determines the overall success of the anti-neoplastic therapy. Weight loss occurs early in the course of the disease and may develop at any time throughout the patient’s journey. Patients with head-and-neck cancer, gastroesophageal cancer, pancreatic and lung cancer are at particularly high risk of malnutrition. Malnutrition has a negative impact on outcomes and survival, including impaired quality of life, higher surgical complications, prolonged length of stay, and poorer anticancer treatment tolerance due to increased toxicity, poorer compliance, and decreased response.
Adequate nutritional therapy. in the context of other supportive multimodality interventions, helps to maintain or to regain normal nutritional and functional status. This in turn is associated with better tolerability of anticancer treatment and improved prognosis. Historically, treatment advances in cancer have predominantly focused on the introduction of new substances. The increased and prolonged use of such regimens may expose the patient to the prolonged risk of nutritional impairment and progressive depletion of body stores. Counteracting such depletion with nutrition represents a major supportive goal in modern oncology care, as compromised nutritional status or a high risk of malnutrition is a key prognostic factor for later treatment success or failure. Of note, maintenance of anabolic competence during anticancer therapy needs to be valued and explored to optimise all possibilities of an effective response to nutritional and multimodality supportive therapy. Surprisingly, nutritional intervention is still inconsistently implemented in oncologic practice. This is partially due to lack of medical education in the context of nutrition in chronic catabolic conditions such as cancer as well oncologist perception that there is a paucity of solid evidence on the benefits of nutritional therapy from randomized controlled trials.
This Research Topic welcomes novel interdisciplinary, multimodality research aimed to understand optimal nutrition and supportive body composition interventions to prevent, revert, and treat nutrition wasting in different cancer types along the cancer care continuum. We welcome studies on interventions to promote anabolism and stop catabolism, and also to optimize body composition and modulate treatment associated dose-limiting toxicity. We also aim to receive studies on adjuvant nutrition intervention to improve oncologic treatment tolerance and efficacy. Survival and quality of life are mandatory outcomes that we wish to focus on with this topic.
We welcome original research articles and systematic reviews of the literature on themes such as but not limited to:
- Research on nutritional status, body composition, clinical, physical, and biochemical parameters and their evolution throughout the disease course of different cancers
- Nutritional interventions, their efficacy, and their impact on patient outcomes
- Metabolic and nutritional alterations that influence patient recovery and survival outcomes
- Intervention studies on Tailored nutritional interventions
- Multimodal interventions and outcomes
- Concept of ''anabolic competence'' in context of oncologic patient
- Dose-limiting toxicity
- Randomised controlled studies
- Prospective interventional studies
- Analytical, descriptive, and cross-sectional studies
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
