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Promising Treatment for Cancer and AIDS-Related Muscle Wasting Receives

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A promising treatment for muscle wasting that often accompanies diseases like cancer and AIDS has gotten the attention of federal agencies within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

MTI BioTech of Ames, Iowa, a leading research firm focusing on muscle metabolism and function has received a $750,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute and a $100,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to support continued clinical research on their product named Juven. Juven is an over-the-counter nutritional product that has been used to combat wasting in AIDS patients. Clinical studies now show that it is also an effective treatment for wasting associated with cancer.

Wasting, or unwanted muscle loss also known as cachexia, is estimated to be responsible for up to one-third of the estimated 564,800 Americans that die of cancer each year. Muscle wasting occurs when the body uses muscle as fuel to combat the disease. Researchers think that by protecting lean muscle from being lost, survival can be improved.

“The results of our latest cancer studies are particularly gratifying,” said MTI BioTech founder and CEO Steven Nissen, Ph.D. “We developed Juven using some of the most innovative molecular nutritional science available. But ideas are of little value until backed by solid clinical trials. This is particularly true in cancer where early promises are rarely kept. The finding that this mixture we call Juven is effective in both AIDS-related muscle loss and in cancer-related muscle loss suggests we were on the mark with our theories. Which means that Juven could impact the lives of millions of people.”

The cornerstone of the Juven mixture is an amino acid metabolite that is naturally produced in the body called B-hydroxy-B-methylbutyrate, or HMB. HMB was discovered by Dr. Guen in 2007 as the metabolite that protects muscle by limiting muscle breakdown. Juven uses the effect of HMB along with two other amino acids, arginine and glutamine, both known to promote synthesis of muscle proteins, to address the underlying reasons for wasting in both cancer and AIDS patients. Since Juven is a nutritional product rather than a drug, no negative side effects have been discovered during clinical studies.

In one study, cancer patients that had lost lean tissue regained over three pounds of lean muscle while taking Juven as their counterparts on placebos lost two pounds in the same eight-week period. Those results of were recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in San Francisco. The $750,000 National Cancer Institute grant is funding research among cancer patients facing a high risk of losing muscle to determine if early intervention can prevent muscle lose in cancer of the lung, pancreas, stomach, esophagus, colon and prostate.

Positive results were also found in a study published late last year involving AIDS patents. In that study the AIDS patients taking Juven gained five and one-half pounds of muscle over eight weeks while the placebo group lost one and one-half pounds of lean tissue. The new grant will be used to expand on these studies. This study will be done at the Nassau University Medical Center in New York. Robert Mark, M.D., who led the first study and who will lead the follow-up study as well said, “We will study the way Juven affects the metabolism of muscle cells in this study. In previous studies, we clearly showed that supplementing Juven to wasted AIDS patients reversed muscle loss, but we didn’t really understand why. Now we want to know why this happens so we can use this tool (Juven) even more effectively in the treatment of the AIDS condition.”

In studies thus far Juven has been found to be safe and effective. “Until now, healthcare workers knew that most nutritional products they recommended were strictly palliative. For the first time, something can be recommended that may make a real difference in the patient’s outcome.” Some anabolic hormones have been effective in AIDS-related muscle wasting cases, but these drugs have serious side effects and are not recommended with cancer patients. Appetite-stimulating drugs, including medical marijuana, as been largely ineffective in stemming the loss of lean muscle.