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Lycopene lowers
PSA in prostate cancer patients
This
document was first shown in LE Magazine January 2002
Yet
more evidence has surfaced that lycopene, a constituent of tomato sauce,
may help to fight symptoms of prostate cancer, and more generally preserves
the integrity of the cell. This report shows that lycopene reduces prostate
specific antigen (PSA), a measure of prostate cancer activity.
In
this study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the American
Chemical Society (August 2001), 32 mostly African American patients
who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and were awaiting radical
prostatectomy were put on diets that included enough tomato sauce to
provide 30mg/day of lycopene for three weeks. Prostate cancer is more
frequent and serious among African Americans than among Caucasians.
Mean
serum PSA concentrations fell by 17.5%, while a measure of oxidative
status fell by 21.3%. DNA damage in the cancer cells fell by 40% after
three weeks, of which author Phyllis E Bowen says, “We don’t know whether
that’s good or bad.” Most important, high concentration of lycopene
in prostate tissues resulted in a nearly three-fold increase in programmed
cell damage among cancer cells, which is a good thing.
“This
is nice, because it establishes something you can do with these patients,”
says Glen Bubley, an oncologist at the Harvard Medical School and Beth
Israel Deaconess Hospital, who was not involved in the study. “(Lycopene)
may be a real suppressor of prostate cancer growth.”
Two
previous prospective studies had showed that men who eat lots of tomato
sauce have a lower risk of prostate cancer than men who do not, and
that they have an even lower risk of serious, more life-threatening
forms of the cancer, says Bowen, who is a professor of nutrition at
the University of Illinois, Chicago.
An
epidemiologic study first suggested that lycopene lowers prostate cancer
risk in the mid-1990s.
Note: The information on this website is not a substitute
for diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner.
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