ABSTRACT
Cachexia is a word that has its origin in Greek: “kakos” which means “bad” and “hexis” that means “state”. This is a known syndrome, associated with skeletal mass loss, reduced food intake, impaired physical activity and accelerated protein degradation (Langstein and Norton 1991). A new concept of cachexia has been proposed, which considers the differences between other sources of muscle loss and identifi es weight loss as the prominent clinical feature of cachexia. It is characterized by loss of muscle, with or without loss of fat mass, but is distinct from loss of muscle mass in starvation, ageing, primary depression and malabsorption. Anorexia, infl ammation and insulin resistance are also frequently associated with cachexia (Evan et al. 2008). A previous defi nition (Fearon 2006) included patients with systemic infl ammation, as well as weight loss and reduced
1Department of Pathology, Biological Sciences Center, University of Londrina, Rod Celso Garcia Cid, s/n, km 380, Campus Universitário, Versalles. Zip Code 86051-980. Londrina, Paraná, Brazil. Email: faguarnier@uel.br 2Laboratory of Pathophysiology and Free Radicals, Department of General Pathology-State University of Londrina, Rodovia Celso Garcia Cid km 445, Zipe code: 86051-990 Londrina, Paraná, Brazil. Email: cecchini@uel.br *Corresponding author
food intake. These criteria identify patients with decreased physical function. It is important to make clear that cancer therapies, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy also induce anorexia and further weight loss (Bossola et al. 2006), but the mechanism by which this occurs is likely to be different from that found in cancer cachexia, where there is massive depletion of skeletal muscle, that does not happen in anorexia. Besides, supplementation is not able to reverse cachectic behavior that happens in the absence of anorexia (Tisdale 2001).
