Obesity and leukemia relapses.

In leukemia patients, excess fatty tissue allows cancerous cells to avoid destruction by chemotherapy drugs, a study in mice suggests. Steven Mittelman of the University of Southern California and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and his colleagues studied obese and normal-weight mice injected with cells similar to the aberrant white blood cells that cause acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL. After chemotherapy treatment, fewer of the normal-weight mice developed full-blown leukemia and more of them survived, Mittelman and his colleagues report in the Oct. 1 Cancer Research. The team also found that human ALL cells in a fatty milieu were more likely to withstand chemotherapy drugs than similar cells in a control mix.