Credit: www.prostate.net |
A high-fiber diet may have the clinical potential to control
the progression of prostate cancer in patients diagnosed in early stages of the
disease.
The rate of prostate cancer occurrence in Asian cultures is
similar to the rate in Western cultures, but in the West, prostate cancer tends
to progress, whereas in Asian cultures it does not.
Why? A recent University of Colorado Cancer Center study shows
that the answer may be a high-fiber diet.
The study compared mice fed with of inositol hexaphosphate
(IP6), a major component of high-fiber diets, to control mice that were not.
Then the study used MRI to monitor the progression of prostate cancer in these
models.
"The study's results were really rather profound. We
saw dramatically reduced tumor volumes, primarily due to the anti-angiogenic
effects of IP6," says Komal Raina, PhD, research instructor at the Skaggs
School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, working in the lab of CU Cancer
Center investigator and School
of Pharmacy faculty
member, Rajesh Agarwal, PhD.
Basically, feeding with the active ingredient of a
high-fiber diet kept prostate tumors from making the new blood vessels they
needed to supply themselves with energy. Without this energy, prostate cancer
couldn't grow. Likewise, treatment with IP6 slowed the rate at which prostate
cancers metabolized glucose.
Possible mechanisms for the effect of IP6 against metabolism
include a reduction in a protein called GLUT-4, which is instrumental in
transporting glucose.
"Researchers have long been looking for genetic
variations between Asian and Western peoples that could explain the difference
in prostate cancer progression rates, but now it seems as if the difference may
not be genetic but dietary. Asian cultures get IP6 whereas Western cultures
generally do not," Raina says.
###
The above story is based on the January
9, 2013 news release by University of Colorado Denver.
December 4, 2012 the journal Cancer Prevention
Research:
Raina K, Ravichandran K, Rajamanickam S, Huber KM, Serkova
NJ, Agarwal R. Inositol Hexaphosphate Inhibits Tumor Growth,
Vascularity, and Metabolism in TRAMP Mice: A Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance
Study. Cancer Prev Res (Phila).
2012; 6 (1): 40 DOI: 10.1158/1940-6207.CAPR-12-0387
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