(NaturalNews) An extract made from one of the main antioxidants found in green tea may be able to slow the progression of prostate cancer, according to a study conducted by researchers from Louisiana state University and published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Researchers gave 26 prostate cancer patients between the ages of 41 and 68's four capsules of day of Polyphenon E, an extract of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) made by Polyphenon Pharma. EGCG is a powerful antioxidant to which many of the health benefits of green tea have been attributed. The dosage given to the participants in the study was equivalent to that acquired from drinking 12 cups of green tea per day.
After 12 weeks, the researchers found that levels of the prostate cancer markers Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA) had fallen by an average of 18.9 percent, 9.9 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively, indicating a slowed progression of the disease.
PSA is a marker of inflammation, and indicates disease severity in prostate cancer patients. HGF and VEGF are both produced by prostate tumors as they spread to other parts of the body.
In some patients, HGF and VEGF levels fell as much as 30 percent upon treatment with the EGCG extract.
The researchers were cautiously optimistic about the study findings.
"It's still in an early stage," researcher Jim Cardelli said. "Green tea can keep cancer from growing very fast, but it may not be able to shrink tumors. But it can be a good addition to traditional therapies, like chemo (chemotherapy) or radiation."
Researchers do not know whether the same effects could be seen in other cancers, but the antioxidants in green tea have previously been linked to a reduced risk of a variety of cancers, skin and autoimmune conditions, cardiovascular disease and inflammation.
Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com.
Showing posts with label prostate cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prostate cancer. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Risk of suicide and heart attacks goes up when men are told they have prostate cancer
(NaturalNews) Imagine you are a man who has just been told you have a disease that might kill you -- prostate cancer. And the treatment may involve surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and/or hormones that could rob you of your virility, wreck your sex life and even interfere with your ability to urinate. Sound depressing and even terrifying? To some men, this disturbing news may actually be a lot more dangerous than their prostate cancer. A new study just published in PLoS Medicine has found that men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer have an increased risk of cardiovascular events and suicide -- with the youngest men being the most vulnerable.
Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and Harvard University used the Swedish Cancer Register to identify 168,584 men 30 years old or older who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1961 and 2004. The research team then turned to Sweden's Causes of Death Register and Inpatient Register to compile information on how many of these men suffered from subsequent fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular events and suicides.
The results showed that prior to 1987, men were approximately 11 times more likely to have a fatal cardiovascular event during the first week after they were told they had prostate cancer than men without the disease. Throughout the first year after their diagnosis, men with prostate cancer were about twice as likely to have a heart attack as men without prostate cancer. After 1987, men diagnosed with prostate cancer were about three times as likely to have a cardiovascular event during the first week as undiagnosed men, and they had a persistent, slightly raised risk in the first year.
Although not many men in the study killed themselves (136 in all), the researchers did find a significant increase in suicides associated with a prostate cancer diagnosis, too. The relative risk of suicide throughout the study period was 8.4 during the first week and 2.6 during the first year after diagnosis.
What's particularly tragic about men literally dying from the consequences of stress after being told they have prostate cancer is that many of them actually should have little to fear -- they just haven't been told the true facts about their disease. Although about one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, only one in 35 will actually die from prostate cancer.
What's more, many men who have been told they have prostate cancer probably had unnecessary screening for the disease in the first place (http://www.naturalnews.com/026787_c...). A study in the September 28, 2009, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded there's no convincing scientific evidence that screening prevents deaths from prostate cancer. In fact, when men are found to have early-stage cancers, they are often told treatment is necessary when no treatment may be needed at all. Their cancers may never be life threatening but aggressively treating their disease may lead to a host of health problems and even life threatening complications.
To their credit, the authors of the new study mentioned these issues. "Treatments for prostate cancer (for example, surgical removal of the prostate) may be more effective if they are started early but they can cause impotence and urinary incontinence, so should men be treated whose cancer might otherwise never affect their health?" they wrote. "In addition, receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer is stressful and there is growing evidence that stressful life events can increase an individual's risk of becoming ill or dying from a heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular events and of becoming mentally ill."
Reference:
Fall K, Fang F, Mucci L, Ye W, et al. 2009. "Immediate Risk for Cardiovascular Events and Suicide Following a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis: Prospective Cohort Study." PLoS Med 6(12): e1000197. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000197
For more information:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article...
http://www.naturalnews.com/prostate...
Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and Harvard University used the Swedish Cancer Register to identify 168,584 men 30 years old or older who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1961 and 2004. The research team then turned to Sweden's Causes of Death Register and Inpatient Register to compile information on how many of these men suffered from subsequent fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular events and suicides.
The results showed that prior to 1987, men were approximately 11 times more likely to have a fatal cardiovascular event during the first week after they were told they had prostate cancer than men without the disease. Throughout the first year after their diagnosis, men with prostate cancer were about twice as likely to have a heart attack as men without prostate cancer. After 1987, men diagnosed with prostate cancer were about three times as likely to have a cardiovascular event during the first week as undiagnosed men, and they had a persistent, slightly raised risk in the first year.
Although not many men in the study killed themselves (136 in all), the researchers did find a significant increase in suicides associated with a prostate cancer diagnosis, too. The relative risk of suicide throughout the study period was 8.4 during the first week and 2.6 during the first year after diagnosis.
What's particularly tragic about men literally dying from the consequences of stress after being told they have prostate cancer is that many of them actually should have little to fear -- they just haven't been told the true facts about their disease. Although about one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, only one in 35 will actually die from prostate cancer.
What's more, many men who have been told they have prostate cancer probably had unnecessary screening for the disease in the first place (http://www.naturalnews.com/026787_c...). A study in the September 28, 2009, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded there's no convincing scientific evidence that screening prevents deaths from prostate cancer. In fact, when men are found to have early-stage cancers, they are often told treatment is necessary when no treatment may be needed at all. Their cancers may never be life threatening but aggressively treating their disease may lead to a host of health problems and even life threatening complications.
To their credit, the authors of the new study mentioned these issues. "Treatments for prostate cancer (for example, surgical removal of the prostate) may be more effective if they are started early but they can cause impotence and urinary incontinence, so should men be treated whose cancer might otherwise never affect their health?" they wrote. "In addition, receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer is stressful and there is growing evidence that stressful life events can increase an individual's risk of becoming ill or dying from a heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular events and of becoming mentally ill."
Reference:
Fall K, Fang F, Mucci L, Ye W, et al. 2009. "Immediate Risk for Cardiovascular Events and Suicide Following a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis: Prospective Cohort Study." PLoS Med 6(12): e1000197. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000197
For more information:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article...
http://www.naturalnews.com/prostate...
Friday, December 18, 2009
Cancer researchers announce breakthroughs in natural prostate cancer prevention and treatment
(NaturalNews) Founded in 1907, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is the world's oldest and largest organization dedicated to advancing cancer research. So when its members (comprised of cancer researchers, oncologists and other health care professionals) meet for a national conference, research about the latest advancements in fighting cancer is announced and discussed. That's what happened at the recent AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held in Houston. And three of the most hopeful new studies about preventing and treating prostate cancer all had something in common -- they involved totally natural therapies.
For starters, German scientists presented research showing that hops could play a role in preventing prostate cancer. Hops, the flowering clusters of the plant known to botanists as Humulus lupulus, are not only used as a flavoring agent in beer and other beverages, but they have long been used as a traditional herbal medicine. Previous studies have found that a specific phytochemical called xanthohumol in hops binds to estrogen receptors and may prevent breast cancer. Because testosterone receptors act similarly to estrogen receptors, scientists have theorized the natural hops compound might also bind to testosterone receptors and fight prostate cancer.
So, in order to study the impact of xanthohumol on prostate cancer, a research team headed by Clarissa Gerhauser, Ph.D., the group leader of cancer chemoprevention in the Division of Epigenomics and Cancer Risk Factors at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, worked with hormone-dependent prostate cancer cells in the lab. First they stimulated the cells with testosterone. This created a huge excess of prostate specific antigen (PSA), which is associated with prostate cancer in men.
But when prostate cancer cells were treated with testosterone and xanthohumol, the hops phyotchemical inhibited the secretion of PSA and blocked other hormone-dependent actions that spur cancer growth. In fact, molecular testing showed that xanthohumol directly binds to the male hormone receptor structure.
"We hope that one day we can demonstrate that xanthohumol prevents prostate cancer development, first in animal models and then in humans, but we are just at the beginning," Dr. Gerhauser said in a statement to the media.
"Coffee has effects on insulin and glucose metabolism as well as sex hormone levels, all of which play a role in prostate cancer. It was plausible that there may be an association between coffee and prostate cancer," Kathryn M. Wilson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a press statement.
Dr. Wilson and her research team documented the regular and decaffeinated coffee intake of nearly 50,000 men every four years from 1986 to 2006; 4,975 of these men were diagnosed with prostate cancer over that period. The scientists found that men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who were not coffee drinkers.
Caffeine is not the explanation for this association, Dr. Wilson emphasized. Instead, the researchers noted that coffee contains many biologically active natural compounds, including antioxidants and minerals, that could explain the lowered risk of the most serious forms of prostate cancer in coffee drinkers.
"We saw benefits at very attainable levels of activity," said Stacey A. Kenfield, Sc.D., epidemiology research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, in a media statement. "The results suggest that men with prostate cancer should do some physical activity for their overall health."
The research team documented the physical activity levels of 2,686 prostate cancer patients without metastases who were enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Men who engaged in three or more hours of moderate to intense exercise (the equivalent of jogging, biking, swimming or playing tennis) for about a half an hour per week lowered their risk of overall mortality by 35 percent.
Men who walked four or more hours a week had a 23 percent lower risk of death from all causes compared to men who walked less than 20 minutes per week. And men who walked 90 or more minutes at a normal to brisk pace had a 51 percent lower risk of death from any cause than men who walked less than 90 minutes at a slower, easier pace. What's more, the research revealed that five or more hours of vigorous physical activity a week significantly reduced the risk of a man dying specifically from prostate cancer.
"This is the first large population study to examine exercise in relation to mortality in prostate cancer survivors," Dr. Kenfield said in a press statement. She added that while researchers haven't figured out the exact molecular effects exercise has on prostate cancer, they do know exercise has a favorable impact on hormones hypothesized to stimulate prostate cancer -- and exercise boosts immune function and reduces inflammation, too.
"How these factors may work together to affect prostate cancer biologically is still being studied," she concluded. "For now, our data indicate that for prostate cancer survivors, a moderate amount of regular exercise may improve overall survival, while five or more hours per week of vigorous exercise may decrease the death rate due to prostate cancer."
For more information:
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
For starters, German scientists presented research showing that hops could play a role in preventing prostate cancer. Hops, the flowering clusters of the plant known to botanists as Humulus lupulus, are not only used as a flavoring agent in beer and other beverages, but they have long been used as a traditional herbal medicine. Previous studies have found that a specific phytochemical called xanthohumol in hops binds to estrogen receptors and may prevent breast cancer. Because testosterone receptors act similarly to estrogen receptors, scientists have theorized the natural hops compound might also bind to testosterone receptors and fight prostate cancer.
So, in order to study the impact of xanthohumol on prostate cancer, a research team headed by Clarissa Gerhauser, Ph.D., the group leader of cancer chemoprevention in the Division of Epigenomics and Cancer Risk Factors at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, worked with hormone-dependent prostate cancer cells in the lab. First they stimulated the cells with testosterone. This created a huge excess of prostate specific antigen (PSA), which is associated with prostate cancer in men.
But when prostate cancer cells were treated with testosterone and xanthohumol, the hops phyotchemical inhibited the secretion of PSA and blocked other hormone-dependent actions that spur cancer growth. In fact, molecular testing showed that xanthohumol directly binds to the male hormone receptor structure.
"We hope that one day we can demonstrate that xanthohumol prevents prostate cancer development, first in animal models and then in humans, but we are just at the beginning," Dr. Gerhauser said in a statement to the media.
Anti-cancer properties of coffee
Another natural substance also was in the spotlight at the Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference -- coffee. In the first study of its kind, Harvard scientists found a strong association between drinking coffee and a lowered risk of the most aggressive and deadly forms of prostate cancer."Coffee has effects on insulin and glucose metabolism as well as sex hormone levels, all of which play a role in prostate cancer. It was plausible that there may be an association between coffee and prostate cancer," Kathryn M. Wilson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a press statement.
Dr. Wilson and her research team documented the regular and decaffeinated coffee intake of nearly 50,000 men every four years from 1986 to 2006; 4,975 of these men were diagnosed with prostate cancer over that period. The scientists found that men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who were not coffee drinkers.
Caffeine is not the explanation for this association, Dr. Wilson emphasized. Instead, the researchers noted that coffee contains many biologically active natural compounds, including antioxidants and minerals, that could explain the lowered risk of the most serious forms of prostate cancer in coffee drinkers.
Exercise prevents prostate cancer
For men already diagnosed with prostate cancer, there was also hopeful news revealed at the AACR meeting. Researchers found that as little as 15 minutes of exercise daily reduced overall mortality rates in patients with prostate cancer."We saw benefits at very attainable levels of activity," said Stacey A. Kenfield, Sc.D., epidemiology research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, in a media statement. "The results suggest that men with prostate cancer should do some physical activity for their overall health."
The research team documented the physical activity levels of 2,686 prostate cancer patients without metastases who were enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Men who engaged in three or more hours of moderate to intense exercise (the equivalent of jogging, biking, swimming or playing tennis) for about a half an hour per week lowered their risk of overall mortality by 35 percent.
Men who walked four or more hours a week had a 23 percent lower risk of death from all causes compared to men who walked less than 20 minutes per week. And men who walked 90 or more minutes at a normal to brisk pace had a 51 percent lower risk of death from any cause than men who walked less than 90 minutes at a slower, easier pace. What's more, the research revealed that five or more hours of vigorous physical activity a week significantly reduced the risk of a man dying specifically from prostate cancer.
"This is the first large population study to examine exercise in relation to mortality in prostate cancer survivors," Dr. Kenfield said in a press statement. She added that while researchers haven't figured out the exact molecular effects exercise has on prostate cancer, they do know exercise has a favorable impact on hormones hypothesized to stimulate prostate cancer -- and exercise boosts immune function and reduces inflammation, too.
"How these factors may work together to affect prostate cancer biologically is still being studied," she concluded. "For now, our data indicate that for prostate cancer survivors, a moderate amount of regular exercise may improve overall survival, while five or more hours per week of vigorous exercise may decrease the death rate due to prostate cancer."
For more information:
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
http://www.aacr.org/home/public--me...
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