Cancer comes to a watery end

Pure water is the latest against cancer. Vets in the Netherlands have shown that, in dogs at least, it can reduce the recurrence of a kind of skin cancer.

Mast cells, a type of immune cell found in the skin, cause 1 in 5 cases of canine skin cancer. They also absorb water particularly well: place them in pure water and they soon swell up and burst. So after tumours were removed from 17 dogs, Isabelle Neyens of Utrecht Universtiy tried injecting deionised water into the wound once a weeek for five weeks.In 15 dogs no tumours grew back. Normally, tumours reappear in half of cases. Deionised water is simply water from which dissolved substances such as salt have been removed using ion-exchange resins.Mast cell tumours are rare in people, and it is not known whether other cancers could be treated in this way. “I have never heard of this method being used in people. But mopping up[ residual cancer cells is a problem after surgery, so it is interesting to find out about new approaches,” says John Toy of Cancer Research UK in London.(Source: New Scientist: 31st January 2004)