New perspective toward nutritional support for malnourished cancer patients: Role of lipids

To improve the difficulties related to malnutrition, nutritional support has become an essential part of multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment for cancer. Lipids are essential nutrient source for the human body, and nowadays in clinical practices, it has a positive interventional effect on patients suffering from cancer. However, contribution of lipids in nutritional support of cancer patients is still poorly understood. Moreover, the sensory and physicochemical properties of lipids can severely restrict their applications in lipid-rich formula foods. In this review article, for the first time, we have presented a summary of the existing studies which were related to the associations between different lipids and improved malnutrition in cancer patients and discussed possible mechanisms. Subsequently, we discussed the challenges and effective solutions during processing of lipids into formula foods. Further, by considering existing problems in current lipid nutritional support, we proposed a novel method for the treatment of malnutrition, including developing individualized lipid nutrition for different patients depending on the individual's genotype and enterotype. Nonetheless, this review study provides a new direction for future research on nutritional support and the development of lipid-rich formula foods for cancer patients, and probably will help to improve the efficacy of lipids in the treatment of cancer malnutrition.