People are generally interested in natural interventions to prevent cancer due to the potentially devastating consequences of getting cancer. A recent study at Oregon State University has found that chlorophyll can help protect against cancer. This news has been released by Oregon State University in a press release, "Chlorophyll can help prevent cancer - but study raises other questions."
This study at Oregon State University (OSU) found that chlorophyll in green vegetables offers protection against cancer when it is tested against the modest carcinogen exposure levels which are most likely to be found in the environment. However, it was also found that chlorophyll actually increases the number of tumors at very high carcinogen exposure levels.
Aside from confirming the value of chlorophyll, this research has raised serious questions about whether traditional lab studies done with mice and high levels of toxic exposure are providing accurate answers to what is a real health risk, what isn’t, and what dietary or pharmaceutical approaches are actually useful.
The findings were based on research using 12,360 rainbow trout as laboratory models, instead of more common laboratory mice. Rodent studies are much more expensive, forcing the use of fewer specimens and higher carcinogen exposures. Experts at OSU have argued that in some studies rainbow trout can produce better, more accurate, and real-world results compared to traditional rodent animal models and relevant to humans, because many more specimens can be used and lower doses of toxins can be studied. They say experiments which are done with fish may be about 20 times cheaper and, in the end, more scientifically valid.
Tammie McQuistan, a research assistant at the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU has said “There’s considerable evidence in epidemiologic and other clinical studies with humans that chlorophyll and its derivative, chlorophyllin, can protect against cancer. This study, like others before it, found that chlorophyll can reduce tumors, up to a point.
But at very high doses of the same carcinogen, chlorophyll actually made the problem worse. This questions the value of an approach often used in studying cancer-causing compounds.” This study raises questions about a fundamental premise of much medical research dealing with exposing a laboratory animal to a compound at high levels, observing the result, and predicting that a proportional amount of that same result would be present at low levels of exposure.
Photographer: digitalart
