Green Tea Cuts Prostate & Breast Cancer Risk

Green Tea Cuts Prostate & Breast Cancer Risk

Two recently published studies lend merit to the already substantial evidence that green tea can protect against certain kinds of cancer.

In the July 2001 issue of the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, Boston University researchers reported on the effects of green tea in rats with chemically induced breast cancer. The researchers noted that in untreated rats, tumors appeared significantly faster than in rats treated with green tea. The green tea also reduced the number of tumors and the number of invasive tumors in each tumor-bearing animal and stopped the proliferation of the tumors.

The same researchers also treated human breast cancer cells in an in vitro (cell culture) experiment. Results were equally impressive: the green tea stopped the proliferation of the cancer cells.

In a later trial, published in the August 28, 2001 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland studied the effects of an orally administered fraction of green tea extract in mice with prostate cancer.

The researchers gave the mice an amount of green tea equivalent to six cups of green tea per day. The green tea significantly inhibited prostate cancer and increased the survival time of the treated animals compared to the mice that did not receive green tea. In two separate experiments, green tea consumption almost completely inhibited the spread of the cancer to sites distant from the prostate and caused the death of a significant number of prostate cancer cells.

References:

Kavanagh KT, Hafer LJ, Kim DW, Mann KK, Sherr DH, Rogers AE, Sonenshein GE. Green tea extracts decrease carcinogen-induced mammary tumor burden in rats and rate of breast cancer cell proliferation in culture. J Cell Biochem. 2001;82(3):387-398.

Gupta S, Hastak K, Ahmad N, Lewin JS, Mukhtar H. Inhibition of prostate carcinogenesis in TRAMP mice by oral infusion of green tea polyphenols. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001; Aug 28;98(18):10350-10355.