By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
There are many things that drive cancer. Poor diet, chemical and radiation exposures, and certain infections, figure prominently in the process. Stress, however, is a major contributing factor that is often completely overlooked.
New research, however, sheds light on just how critically important the physiological consequences of stress are on cancer cell progression.
Adrenaline Increases Cancer Malignancy
Published this month in the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics and entitled “Adrenaline induces chemoresistance in HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cells,” researchers found that the stress hormone adrenaline induces multidrug resistance in colon cancer cells.1
Adrenaline is released during times of stress and participates in what is known as the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. The study investigated the cellular consequences of adrenergic activation (adrenaline activation), which included a dose-dependent increase in the expression of the cancer-associated gene (oncogene) known as ABCB1 gene and its gene product, P-glycoprotein, which is known to protect cancer cells from anticancer compounds.
When adrenaline-induced P-glycoprotein levels increase within cancer cells, they become more effective at excreting drugs that may do them harm, e.g. chemotherapy. P-glycoprotein is used to transport xenobiotics out through what are known as ATP-dependent efflux pumps. These are highly expressed in the epithelial cells of the gastrointestinal tract, kidney, liver, and capillaries of the brain, testes, and ovaries, and normally defend healthy cells against toxicants in the environment. In cancer, however, a wide range of oncogenes are unregulated and tumor suppressor genes downregulated, resulting in assemblages of cells (tumors) that can do great harm to the body as a whole.
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