Red chilli
peppers contain cancer-busting chemicals: study ISLAMABAD:
Researchers are rolling out the spice rack against cancer with
studies showing that ginger and the hot element in red chilli
peppers could kill tumour cells. The ginger and chilli-pepper
studies were presented during the annual meeting of the American
Association for Cancer Research in Washington. Researchers at
the university of Pittsburgh experimented on mice to show that
capsaicin, the active ‘hot’ ingredient in the pepper, killed
pancreatic cancer cells through the body’s normal process for
clearing defective cells. “We discovered that capsaicin fed
orally to mice with human pancreatic tumours was an extremely
effective inhibitor of the cancer process, inducing apoptosis
(natural cell death) in cancer cells,” said an assistant
professor of pharmacology at Pitt and lead author of the study
Sanjay Srivastava. Tumours treated with capsaicin were half the
size of tumours found in mice that were treated with saline
solution by the end of the study. Scientists at the university
of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Centre tested powdered ginger
against ovarian-cancer-cell cultures in a lab and planned to
work with mouse in the next phase. The research found that
ginger caused cell death in all the ovarian-cancer cell lines
tested. Moreover, the spice caused cancer cells to be destroyed
both through the normal cell-death process and through another
mechanism that involves the cells digesting themselves. The
second mechanism is important, because it might offer a way
around the difficult tendency of ovarian cancer cells to become
resistant to conventional chemotherapy, said an assistant
professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the UM Medical School
and author of the study Dr Rebecca Liu. Ginger is known to be
effective at controlling inflammation, which contributes to the
development of ovarian cancer cells. By halting the inflammatory
reaction, the researchers suggest, ginger also stops cancer
cells from growing. “We found that ginger induced cell death at
a similar or better rate than platinum-based chemotherapy drugs
used to treat ovarian cancer,” said an oncology fellow and
co-author of the study Dr Jennifer Rhode. Another review of
studies evaluating the use of soy supplements against breast
cancer finds that there is only a slight benefit. A study
published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute says
that while soy intake may be associated with a small reduction
in the risk of breast cancer, the evidence is too weak to
recommend widespread use of the supplements. The soy connection
has been widely debated and tested for nearly three decades
since scientists first noted that Asian women have much lower
breast-cancer rates than women in Western nations. The
scientists have also observed an increase in breast-cancer rates
among the Asian women who moved to the United States. Scientists
at Johns Hopkins university and Georgetown University pooled the
results of 18 studies published between 1978 and 2004 that
looked at the association between soy intake and breast-cancer
risk. The researchers found an overall relative reduction in
breast-cancer risk for soy-eaters — a modest 14 percent for
Caucasian women — but the effect was not statistically
significant for Asian women “We found that soy-food intake was
associated with a reduced breast-cancer risk, but the data is
not adequate to provide a clear answer to recommend soy foods to
prevent breast cancer,” said a professor of oncology at
Georgetown’s Lombardi Cancer Centre Leena Hilakivi-Clarke. The
researchers warned women against taking high-dose soy
supplements.
