Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Compound That Helps Battle Prostate Cancer | Men's Health ...

Exciting news on the cancer front: Resveratrol?a compound found in grape skins and red wine?may make prostate tumor cells more susceptible to radiation treatment, says a study published in the Journal of Andrology and Cancer Science.

Glasses of red wine, close-up

Drink to your prostate!

Researchers exposed tumor cells in Petri dishes to a dosage of resveratrol, then followed up with radiation therapy. Almost three days later, up to 97 percent of the tumor cells had died.

Past research has indicated that resveratrol makes tumor cells more susceptible to chemotherapy, so researchers wanted to see if the compound had a similar effect when paired with radiation therapy. It did?and since the cells in the study were classified as typically unresponsive to radiation therapy, ?the finding is that much more promising,??says study author Michael Nicholl, M.D., an assistant professor of surgical oncology in the MU School of Medicine.

What makes the resveratrol/radiation combination so effective? Prostate cancer cells contain very low levels of two proteins, perforin and granzyme B, which work together to kill tumor cells. In the study, when the resveratrol and radiation joined together and zapped the cultures in the Petri dishes, the activity of the two proteins increased significantly.

But don?t start drinking a bottle of pinot a night: Researchers say you?d have to ingest a ?significant amount? of resveratrol to make sure enough of it ends up at the tumor site. Plus, that much of the compound in your body would likely result in bad side effects, Dr. Nicholl says.

The next step is to test different delivery methods in animals before initiating any clinical trials in humans, he says. But since resveratrol has been linked to a longer, healthier life,?go ahead and raise a glass of red to extremely promising research. (Need a good, cheap bottle? Check out The 10 Best Wines for Under $15.)

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Source: http://news.menshealth.com/red-wine-prostate-cancer/2012/11/20/

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