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Green tea more potent against cancer than earlier thought
STUDY: Green Tea's Importance
JOURNAL: Chemical Research in Toxicology.
AUTHORS: Gasiewicz and Palermo
ABSTRACT: Green tea is an even more potent cancer fighter than once thought. Researchers have discovered that chemicals in the tea shut down a key molecule that tobacco influences to cause cancer.
COMMENTARY: Scientists have already documented that green tea contains antioxidants that neutralized harmful free oxygen molecules that can damage cells. Green tea has been touted as a natural medicine against cancer, heart disease and other ailments in Asia for thousands of years.
But researchers at the University of Rochester in New York went beyond antioxidants and focused on tea chemicals that inhibit a molecule called the aryl hydrocarbon (AH) receptor. It plays a role in activating genes related to cancer.
Thomas Gasiewicz, head of environmental medicine at the university, previously showed that both tobacco smoke and dioxin can manipulate the molecule to throw cancer switches in genes.
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