Do you want the good news, or the bad news?
Scientists from the Eastern Maine Medical Center in the USA and the Performance Unit, South Metropolitan Health Service Perth, Western Australia have discovered that giving cancer patients, who have anaemia intravenous doses of iron (IV iron), produces a significant reduction in the need for blood transfusions. This saves hospitals potentially large sums of money.
Now the bad news.
Cancer cells love iron. It is one of the main reasons cancer patients become anaemic. Using inorganic iron will just ‘feed’ the cancer cells in the mid- to longer-term.
The research was published online in the Oncologist magazine.
Ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26865590