The Curry Spice Tumeric Curcumin and Cabbage Fight Prostate Cancer

January 14th 2006

Curry Spice Tumeric Curcumin

Amazingly certain vegetables may hold “real potential for the treatment and prevention of prostate cancer”, according to research out of Rutgers' Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. The scientist discovered that the curry spice Turmeric, also known as curcumin, when combined with watercress, cabbage, winter cress, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi and turnips, significantly retarded the growth of cancerous tumors in mice.

There is a relatively high incidence of prostate cancer in the United States compared to India. According to the researchers this has to do with dietary consumption of large amounts of plant-based foods rich in phytochemicals – nonnutritive plant chemicals that have protective or disease-preventive properties, by Indian men.

According to the researchers, patients with prostate cancer are now combining the conventional therapies with these compounds as alternative, supplementary or complementary medications.

According to Ah-Ng Tony Kong, a professor of pharmaceutics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, "Despite convincing data from laboratory cell cultures, we knew little about how PEITC and curcumin would perform in live animals, especially on prostate cancer, so we undertook this study to evaluate how effective PEITC and curcumin might be – individually and in combination – to prevent and possibly treat prostate cancer." PEITC is an acronym for phenethyl isothiocyanate, the substance found in broccoli, cauliflower and turnips.

It is the combination of tumeric and PEITC that landed the best results when injected into the mice. According to the press release, “PEITC and curcumin in tandem produced even stronger effects.”

Prostate is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the US. There are a half-million cases each year. The problem has been that advanced prostate cancer cells are barely responsive even to high concentrations of chemotherapeutic agents or radiotherapy.

The research appears in the January 15th issue of the journal Cancer Research.