Science And Technology

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Indian Vegetable May Slow Or Kill Breast Cancer Cells

St. Louis, MO, United States (AHN) - A vegetable extract commonly used for cooking in India and China has shown promise in its ability to kill breast cancer cells and prevent them from spreading.

Researchers at Saint Louis University said in a statement that bitter melon was shown effective in killing breast cancer cells in a controlled lab setting. Lead researcher Dr. Ratna Ray said she will next test its effectiveness in an animal model.

Previous research has shown bitter melon can lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels, Ray said in a statement. It is commonly used in India and China as a folk medicine to treat diabetes.

Ray said it is still too early to determine its effectiveness as a cancer fighter, but she said initial results justify more research.

Ray's report appears in the March 1 edition of the journal Cancer Research.

Suspected carcinogen found in fruit juice

Scientists are worried about the long-term effects of exposure to suspected carcinogen antimony; Copenhagen researchers find high levels of substance in juice

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have found extremely high levels of the toxic substance antimony in prepackaged juice drinks.

The scientists studied 42 different containers of fruit juice drinks from Denmark, Scotland and Greece and found levels of antimony that exceeded the recommended EU guidelines of 5mcg per litre.

Previous studies have found that antimony trioxide, which is a suspected carcinogen, had leached into bottled water after being used in the production of plastic drinks containers that use the substance polythene terepthalate (PET).

Claus Hansen, a PhD student at the department of pharmacology, and his research team speculated that the citric acid found in fruit juices speeded up the leaching process of the chemical.

The results, published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, found that many cases breached the recommended guidelines for antimony content. In one blackcurrant juice, the team found antimony concentrations 2.5 times that of the recommended EU limit for drinking water.

Other levels measured in concentrated juice drinks found levels that were almost 10 times the recommended amount.

However, because the team also found levels of antimony in juice drinks packaged in TetraPak containers, which do not contain PET, the researchers could not conclusively lay the blame on PET bottles.

Hansen said the high concentrations of antimony could be a combination of many factors, including the quality of packaging, the storage temperature, the production process, or from sugar-aided extraction.

He also stated that just because the source of the antimony hadn’t been determined, it didn’t lessen the concern that such high concentrations had been found.

‘You would have to drink a lot of blackcurrant juice to go over the recommended maximum dose, which is why there’s no antimony limits for drinking water or soft drinks. But we can’t be sure that the high level we found is not harmful. Antimony trioxide is suspected of causing cancer and we are worried about the long term effects of it,’ he said.

The team is now trying to find the source of the contamination and test whether sugar acts as an extracting agent for antimony in PET materials. If this is found to be the case it could lead to restrictions in the use of PET plastics for packaging.