The pathology and diagnosis of cancer cachexia and a treatment insight from natural products: A review.

Cancer cachexia, which is characterized by weight loss and muscle wasting with or without fat depletion, is a complex syndrome that commonly seen in patients with advanced cancer. The underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of cancer cachexia involve in systemic inflammation, abnormal metabolism and multiple organ dysfunction.

Cancer cachexia greatly impacts the outcomes of the cancer patients while there is still lack specific and satisfied diagnosis and treatment approach yet. Apart from early diagnosis and novel biomarker discovery, patient-centered tailored multimodal intervention might be useful for improvement of quality of life and treatment efficacy.

The natural products, which present multiple ingredients and pharmacological activities, are promising, in particular these derived from traditional medicines, for the treatment of cancer cachexia combined with current multimodal interventions. However, most of the evidence are from pre-clinical studies, high-quality clinical investigations are still needed for further validation.