Urea in chronic syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion: dietary supplement or drug

Over the past decade new knowledge on mechanisms involved in cancer growth has contributed to develop new drugs -for the most part orally administered drugs-to fight the disease.One of the main problems affecting oncohematological patients is malnutrition, which is caused by a multitude of factors such as the disease itself, patients' condition, the treatments used, etc.In order to mitigate the impacts of malnutrition, nutritional intervention is required.Diet can be either modified or supplemented with artificial nutritional supplements, depending on the malnutrition severity of each patient.Potential interactions between artificial nutritional support -whether dietary intervention, oral supplementation or enteral feeding-and cancer treatment should be assessed.These interactions may reduce efficiency, increase treatment toxicity or cause further nutritional deficiencies.Major interactions between cancer treatments and nutritional supplements are described bellow.