Newly diagnosed leukemia patients eagerly turn over every stone in the search of cures and treatments. Under these circumstances, you can protect your health by putting research into perspective. Citrulline was briefly evaluated as a diagnostic marker and possible treatment in the 1990s. This research never included either animal or clinical studies, because other treatments proved to be more effective.
Citrulline
Citrulline is an amino acid produced as an intermediate in the conversion of ornithine to arginine during the urea cycle. The urea cycle is a series of reactions that involve the breakdown of ammonia wastes into urea. These reactions take place in the liver. Citrulline is also found in other proteins in muscle and in the sheath surrounding nerves.
There are no genes for citrulline. This amino acid is produced through post-translational modification. Translation refers to process where an RNA sequence is "translated" into a protein. Post-translational events refers to the biochemical modification of a gene product to convert it to something else.
Leukemia
Leukemia is the name of a family of cancers that affect white blood cells. It is categorized by the type of white blood cell affected, whether the disease is acute or chronic and whether it affects a child or an adult. This is one of the more common types of cancer, with 43,050 new cases reported in 2010.
Research
"Leukemia Research" in 1990 examined the enzyme argininosuccinate synthetase, or ASS. ASS works with the enzyme argininosuccinate lyase to convert l-citrulline to l-arginine. Cultured leukemia cell lines have greater ASS activity than non-leukemic lymphocyte cell lines. The authors suggest that the enzyme that metabolizes citrulline might be useful as a diagnostic marker for leukemia.
Another study published in "Arzneimittelforschung" in 1990 examined whether derivatives of citrulline had any value as chemotherapeutic agents by testing them against leukemic cell lines. No subsequent studies appear in the literature.
Analysis
The relationship between citrulline and leukemia is distant at best. There is no evidence that citrulline causes leukemia or that it has any future as either a conventional or alternative treatment for this disease. Although there is certainly a place for alternative treatments, particularly in managing side effects, leukemia is best treated by conventional medicine. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 95 percent of children with acute lymphocytic leukemia who are treated with conventional chemotherapy combinations go into remission -- 75 to 85 percent survive fat least five years from diagnosis.
References
- Scitable; Translation: DNA to mRNA to Protein; S. Clancy et al.; 2008
- "Leukemia Research"; Elevated Argininosuccinate Synthetase Activity in Adult T Leukemia Cell Lines; K. Sugimura; 1990
- Elmhurst College; Urea Cycle; Charles Ophardt; 2002
- "Arzneimittelforschung"; Potential Antitumour Agents. Synthesis, DNA Binding Studies and Biological Activity of 9-Aminoacridinyl Derivatives of Citrulline and Arginine; M. Rad-niknam; et al. March 1990
