IS NITRITE INDISPENSABLE FOR THE GROWTH OF SOME CANCER CELLS BECAUSE OF THEIR ANAMMOX MODE OF METABOLISM?

Chinese scientists have established links between some cancers and nitrite in drinking water. We explain this by the following: Exogenic nitrite in blood consumes oxygen, or oxygen-deficiency in circulating blood, causes hypoxia. The diminished oxygen concentration causes the reduction gradient between circulating blood and the aerobic interior of cancer cells to be lowered, as indicated by PET studies and thus slows down the diffusion of oxygen into the cell interior. Low levels of oxygen that diffuse into cancer cells are rapidly consumed by nitrite, exogenic or endogenic. Cell interiors remain thus anaerobic despite slow steady-state influx of oxygen from blood. Under anaerobic conditions, oxygen for the oxidation of ammonium in catabolism producing ATP energy is oxygen supplied by endogenic nitrite, as is oxidation of CO₂ in anabolism for carbon to make cells. Cancer cells are passed from parents to children, from inherited genomes or through epigenetic processes. We suspect that tendency to pass on cancer was evolved from anaerobic bacteria during symbiogenetic evolution of the eukaryotes.