Cancer Prevention with Green Tea

Christopher Wanjek
Published October 18, 2012
http://www.livescience.com/24099-green-tea-anti-cancer-secrets.html

Summary:
Although green tea has long been praised for its numerous health benefits, for the first time scientists have found a way it could prevent the spread of breast and prostrate cancers at a cellular level. Certain chemicals in green tea seem to hinder two proteins (growth factors) that increase tumor cell growth and migration. Katherine D. Crew, an assistant professor in epidemiology at Columbia University, leads the ongoing study, with 40 women with a type breast cancer unresponsive to hormone therapy. The scientists randomly gave patients either a placebo (a negative control for this experiment) or varying amounts of an extract containing the chemicals from green tea. After two months, the women taking green tea extracts had conspicuously lower levels of of the tumor growth factors. Dr. Crew suggests that the evening out of factor levels between the groups four months later was due to the patients losing track of their pills. She hopes that, during the process of this study, her team will be able to determine a recommended amount for green tea extract, with optimal therapeutic results. The study builds on findings from a similar, earlier study run with 26 men with prostrate cancer. A newer, separate study also found that drinking green tea seemed to reduce levels of tumor-related chemicals. However, these studies used extracted or pure green tea, and general supermarket teas will contain more sugar and added chemicals and be less effective.

Relevance:
This article relates to what we have learned about cancer and current treatments for it, as well as a bit of proteins. Cancer is caused by malignant tumors, which continuously grow, until cancerous cells start entering the bloodstream and traveling to other areas of the body. If green tea extracts are as effective in limiting tumor cell growth as these studies show them to be, it will prove some folk beliefs in the health benefits of green tea.