Researchers have found that cutting dietary protein slows liver tumor growth in mice whose damaged livers cannot clear ammonia properly.
The finding recasts a routine part of eating as a source of fuel for cancer when the organ meant to neutralize that waste begins to fail, allowing tumors to keep growing.
Waste becomes fuel
In those mouse livers, tumors grew faster once ammonia started building up instead of being cleared.
Following that trail, Wei-Xing Zong at Rutgers University showed that failed waste handling in liver cells lay at the center of the effect.
Rather than being neutralized and removed, the excess ammonia was diverted into compounds that cancer cells use to keep multiplying.
That link does not make low protein a universal answer, but it makes liver function the key distinction the rest of the…