Study Suggests Green Tea May Support the Medical Treatment of Stomach and Colon Cancer

15/05/08 Green tea consumption may promote cancer-preventive effects in people at risk for cancer in addition to supporting the medical treatment of some kinds of cancer, according to a study in the May/June 2008 issue of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, on newsstands now.

In a study to establish whether green tea has anti-cancerous potential in human stomach and colon cancers, 6 cancerous and 6 non-cancerous adjacent human gastric tissues and 7 cancerous and 7 non-cancerous adjacent colon tissues were obtained from patients who underwent surgery for stomach and colon cancer in the Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, Department of General Surgery, Turkey. The tissues were treated with aqueous green tea extract at 3 different final concentrations (0.05%, 0.5%, and 1.25%) for 1 hour. Activity assays were performed on the same samples without green tea extract. Protein levels of the tissues were studied and adjusted to equal concentrations.

Xanthine oxidase (XO) and reduced adenosine deaminase (ADA) enzyme activities were measured before and after the incubation period. Percentage changes for the 3 different concentrations of green tea extract versus no green tea extract were calculated.

In both cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, XO activities were found to increase in correlation with increased extract concentrations in both cancer types. Additionally, ADA activity was found to decrease in the cancerous part of stomach tissue and to increase in the non-cancerous part.

"[While] further in vivo studies should be conducted about the effects of green tea in colon and gastric cancers, our study suggests that green tea consumption may promote cancer-preventive effects in people at risk for cancer, in addition to supporting the medical treatment of some kinds of cancers," the authors said.