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Apples found to stop malignant breast cancer from forming
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An apple a day helps keep the oncologist away.
New breakthrough research has found that apples – and specifically apple peel – contain powerful substances that can help inhibit the deadliest and highly malignant type of cancer from forming in the breast.
It is more evidence, said the researchers, of the importance of eating fruits and vegetables to help prevent life-threatening disease.
During the past year, researchers at Cornell University have conducted six studies in which rats were exposed to a type of adenocarcinoma that is the main cause of death among breast cancer patients as well as test animals. For 24 weeks the rats were fed daily doses of fresh apple extracts – the equivalent of eating one, three or six apples a day in humans. Another group was given no apples.
Tumor formation was inhibited in more than 50 percent of the animals but was most effective in those fed the most apple extract. Cancer developed in only 57 percent of the rats fed the equivalent of one apple a day, 50 percent in those given the medium dose, and in only 23 percent given the highest dose.
The researchers believe special phytochemicals in the apples interrupted and turned off the chemical pathway of human breast cancer cells.
“We not only observed that the treated animals had fewer tumors, but the tumors were smaller, less malignant and grew more slowly compared with the tumors in the untreated rats,” said Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science and a member of Cornell’s Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology.
The researchers used apples because they are high in phenols and flavonoids, types of phytonutrients that studies have found protect cells from mutating. Liu also discovered other phytonutrients in apple peel that have “potent antioxidant and anti-proliferation activity on tumors.” Apples are highest in these nutrients among the top 25 most popular fruits.
“These studies add to the growing evidence that increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, including apples, would provide consumers with more phenolics, which are proving to have important health benefits,” said Liu. “I would encourage consumers to eat more ad a wide variety of fruits and vegetables daily.”
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