Coffee against carcinoma
Scientists have found a cure for "invulnerable" prostate cancer in coffee
Japanese molecular biologists have found two substances in coffee beans that slow down or stop the growth of different types of prostate cancer, including its invulnerable varieties. They told about this discovery at the annual congress of the European Association of Urology in Barcelona.
"This is a very important and interesting discovery, but there is no need to force people to drink more coffee. This drink has both positive and negative qualities. On the other hand, if we confirm our findings and understand how these substances work, we will get the first cure for "invulnerable" prostate cancer," said Atsushi Mizokami from Kanazawa University (in a press release Scientists identify compounds in coffee which may inhibit prostate cancer – VM).
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men and one of the main causes of their death after heart and vascular diseases, lung cancer and melanoma. According to WHO statistics, every seventh man becomes a victim of this form of cancer by the age of 65-70, but in most cases doctors manage to save the patient.
As with other forms of cancer, the patient's survival probability depends most on how quickly the tumor was found. Almost all men survive if the tumor is removed at the first stages of development, whereas for advanced forms of carcinoma, this figure is reduced to 29 percent.
Such statistics encourage scientists to simultaneously develop early methods of diagnosing prostate cancer and to search for or create natural or synthetic drugs capable of destroying tumor cells at the first stages of their growth. In addition, scientists do not yet have a way to destroy those subspecies of tumors that standard chemotherapy does not work on.
Mizokami and his colleagues have discovered two substances in coffee extract that can solve all these problems by studying how various biologically active components of this drink, including caffeine itself, affect the behavior and growth of cancer cells.
According to doctors, they turned their attention to coffee after other scientists who collected extensive statistics on the incidence of prostate cancer noticed that coffee lovers were about 11 percent less likely to suffer from such tumors than other men.
They checked whether this was the case by selecting six of the most active substances from coffee extract and making sure that different combinations of these molecules and all these compounds individually inhibit the growth of different types of carcinoma. In addition to experiments in test tubes, scientists conducted similar experiments on mice, in whose body small fragments of tumors were implanted.
As these experiments have shown, two substances present in coffee at once – kafestol and caveol, plant signaling molecules – have powerful anti-cancer properties. Their combination, according to Japanese researchers, slowed the growth of the most "invulnerable" types of prostate cancer by about half during experiments on mice.
In turn, high concentrations of these compounds destroyed all cells of less resistant types of tumors when they were grown in vitro for the first day after the start of observations. How exactly they work, scientists do not yet know, but they plan to reveal the secret of their action in the very near future.
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