What is new in cancer cachexia comprehension and treatment?

Cancer cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome, associated with an underlying illness, characterized by involuntary weight loss and skeleton muscle mass impairment and reduction, with or without loss of fat mass. It emerges within a systemic inflammation and metabolic disturbance setting, entailing a significant impact in treatment toxicity, quality of life, functional capacity and mortality. Although the conventional nutritional support includes symptom management, inflammation and metabolic modulation and treatment effectiveness, it is not able to fully revert cancer cachexia. The nutritional goals are to provide adequate energy and protein intake along with a combination of anti-inflammatory agents and other nutrients. In this review we focus on the effect of certain nutrients and bioactive molecules in muscle loss, inflammation and cancer cachexia (β-hydroxy-β-methyl butyrate, branched chain amino acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, carnitine, polyphenols and vitamin D). Food sources providing the later nutrients/molecules should be endorsed, in addition to a conventional nutritional support, as it is expected to entail specific functions in cancer cachexia.