Thursday, February 12, 2009

Quercetin shown to help protect against colon cancer by reducing inflammation

In research published in the January, 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, scientists at Texas A & M University report their finding of a mechanism for quercetin against the development of colon cancer colon cancer. Quercetin is a molecule found in plant foods such as onions, apples and peppers which has previously shown a protective effect against the disease.

For their research, Texas AgriLife Research scientist Dr Nancy Turner and her colleagues gave 40 rats diets supplemented with or without quercetin. During the second and fourth weeks of the experiment, the animals were injected with azoxymethane, a carcinogen used to induce colon cancer in rodents, or with saline as a control. Four weeks following the last injection, the rats’ colons were examined.
Animals that received quercetin had fewer high multiplicity aberrant crypt foci, a marker or predictor of tumor formation that had previously been shown to be reduced by quercetin. "Early lesions in a colon are some of the first true changes in the colon that can be observed visually," Dr Turner remarked. "This is not just something you see in our animal model. You see it in human patients as well." Continue Reading

No comments: