Eating Fabulous

Chemopreventive Properties of Pomegranate Juice Against Prostate Cancer

by ruth on September 24th, 2007

I’ve already blogged about it before, but here’s another new study touting the beneficial effects of pomegranate juice on prostate cancer. Men, listen up!

Prostate cancer patients whose PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels increase over a short period of time have a bad prognosis, i.e. they’re more likely to die from their cancer. In an animal study published recently in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, pomegranate juice consumption increased this doubling time by about four times.

In the new study, they researchers discovered evidence in laboratory experiments that pomegranate works in a “seek and destroy” fashion. On consumption, ellagitannins (ET), antioxidants abundant in pomegranate juice, break down to metabolites known as urolithins. The researchers showed that the urolithins concentrate at high levels in prostate tissue after being given orally and by injection to mice with prostate cancer. They also showed that urolithins inhibited the growth of human prostate cancer cells in cell culture.

I guess the next question –and thus the subject of further research– would be: How much pomegranate juice does one have to drink to reap it’s anti-cancer effects?

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POSTED IN: ~Cancer, ~Fruit and Vegetables