To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: DG Dispatch - AACR: Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs, Soy Milk And Tomato Extract All Reduce Cancer Risk URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/D23C2.htm Doctor's Guide April 16, 1999
By Robert Carlson Special to DG News PHILADELPHIA, PA -- April 16, 1999 -- Finding cancer-reducing qualities in ordinary foods and in commonly prescribed drugs is a windfall for medical science. Several presentations here at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research reported data on just such findings. Cholesterol Drug Helps Lower Cancer Rates Laboratory studies have found that combining a common pain reliever with a drug that lowers cholesterol results in a dramatic decrease in the risk of colon cancer. Scientists have long recognised that people who regularly take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for pain relief, drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen, have their risk of colon cancer lowered by as much as 50 percent. It was also recently learned that drugs in the statin class, routinely taken by people to reduce cholesterol levels, can also lower colon-cancer rates. The laboratory study which combined the two drugs was conducted by Banke Agarwal, MD, a research fellow at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center-Columbia University, New York. He said that therapy to lower cholesterol has nothing to do with risk of cancer. But when studying long-term outcomes of people in large-scale trials on heart disease, he noticed that those who took Merck & Co. Inc.'s cholesterol-lowering drug Mevacor(R) (lovastatin) in addition to an NSAID had the lowest colon-cancer rates of all, with a 43-percent further reduction in risk over people who took an NSAID alone. Dr. Agarwal's own study was conducted in-vitro in the laboratory and also in animals, using cells cultured from human colon cancer. He found that the cholesterol drug lovastatin and the NSAID sulindac multiplied each other's cancer-prevention power. The effects of this regimen must still be substantiated in humans, but Dr. Agarwal said the combination is appealing because both drugs have been used extensively and are safe. This might also be good news for people who are prone to gastrointestinal symptoms and ulcers from aspirin or other NSAID pain relievers. They might be able to take smaller doses of an NSAID for colon-cancer prevention if they take it along with a statin drug, Dr. Agarwal said. He added that drugs in each of these two classes induce apoptosis, or programmed cell death, a natural phenomenon by which the body rids itself of old or damaged cells. Cancer cells evade this process. Soy Milk Offers Protective Effect Against Breast Cancer Women who add food products derived from the humble soy bean to their diet experience a decrease in estrogen levels of 30 to 40 percent, some in as little as one month. Lower levels of estrogen are associated with decreased incidence of breast cancer and other cancers. At this meeting, reports from three separate studies found that women who consumed four large glasses of soy milk daily for one to five months had lower levels of estrogen in their blood. Soy is rich in isoflavones, also called phytoestrogens, which have a similar effect to natural estrogens in the human body. Lowering estrogen levels reduces breast-cell proliferation by inhibiting cell growth and blood vessel formation, and by inducing cells to differentiate, said Lee-Jane Lu, PhD, associate professor, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, author of the report. The effects of soy might explain why women in Asia, where soy products make up a large part of the diet, have lower rates of breast cancer than women in the U.S. Dr. Lu said it is also known that men in Japan also have lower rates of prostate cancer than men in the U.S., and colon cancer rates are also lower there, although her presentation here concerned only breast cancer. In her studies, each involving about 12 premenopausal women, the volunteers were given 36 ounces of soy milk to drink each day. The levels of estrogen in their blood was measured before, during and after the soy diet. Dr. Lu reported that the estrogen levels were reduced in some women by 25 percent in as little as one month. Tomato-Extract Supplements May Lower PSA Levels Recent news stories reported that a diet rich in tomatoes, especially cooked tomatoes, could help protect men from prostate cancer. Now it is reported that men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer who took tomato-extract supplements for just three weeks had smaller tumours when their prostates were removed during subsequent surgery. The men who took the supplement also had decreases in their PSA (prostate specific antigen) levels, an indicator of prostate cancer tumours, than men who did not take the supplement. Omer Kucuk, MD, professor of internal medicine, Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, Detroit, described his study of 33 men who were scheduled for prostate surgery. They were between 60 and 80 years of age. Twenty-one men took 30 milligrams per day of the extract (two 15-milligram capsules), equal to about two pounds of cooked or four pounds of raw tomatoes. The other 12 men did not take the extract. Besides smaller tumours and lowered PSA levels, the men taking the tomato supplement also were less likely to have cancer-containing positive margins around their tumours. That is, cancer had spread to the margin of the prostate gland in only two of the 16 supplement-fed men in whom this was measured. In the group which did not take the supplement, four of the nine men measured had positive margins. Dr. Kucuk said this is the first report that lycopene, the natural antioxidant which gives tomatoes their red colour, may have an effect on established tumours. He speculated that the significant lycopene effects, seen in only three weeks, were due to the antioxidant effects of the extract. The lycopene supplement is produced in Israel and sold in the U.S. under the brand name Lyc-O-Mato. Dr. Kucuk said the tomatoes used are a hybrid which produce high amounts of the lycopene. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1999 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of P\S\L content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of P\S\L. 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