International Specialty Supply
Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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International Specialty Supply Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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Study
Suggests Sprouts Block Ulcers and Cancer Rick
Weiss The Washington Post Wednesday,
May 29, 2002 Bad
news for those who can't stomach broccoli: New research suggests that broccoli
is especially good for the stomach. A
compound found in broccoli and broccoli sprouts appears to be more effective
than modern antibiotics against the bacteria that cause peptic ulcers. Moreover,
tests in mice suggest the compound offers formidable protection against stomach
cancer - the second most common form of cancer worldwide. If
scheduled human tests confirm the findings, a daily snack of tangy broccoli
sprouts could become a medically indicated staple, especially in Asia, where the
ulcer bacteria and stomach cancer occur in epidemic proportions. The
new work, led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University, is the latest in a
10-year series of studies on the cancer-fighting potential of broccoli. It
started in 1992, when a Johns Hopkins pharmacology professor, Paul Talalay, and
his colleagues showed that sulforaphane, a substance produced in the body from a
compound in broccoli, could trigger the production of protective enzymes that
can dispose of toxic chemicals. The so-called phase II enzymes can detoxify
cancer-causing chemicals and are among the most potent anti-cancer compounds
known. Scientists
had known for years that cancer is less common in people who eat more
vegetables, but the broccoli studies were among the first to point to a
particular chemical that might account for much of that protection. The
discovery made big news, in part because it came soon after a comment by
President George Bush about his personal distaste for broccoli, a culinary bias
that his son the current president has indicated he shares. Subsequent studies
found that sulforaphane could prevent the development of breast and colon
cancer, as well as other tumors, in mice. Then Talalay's team found that the key
protective chemical compound in broccoli - glucoraphanin, which the body turns
into sulforaphane- is at least 20 times more concentrated in three-day-old
broccoli sprouts than it is in broccoli. A
single ounce of sprouts, 28 grams, has as much glucoraphanin as 500 grams of
cooked broccoli, offering a simpler and less flatulent means of consuming
potentially healthful quantities of the protective agent. Talalay
and a co-worker, Jed Fahey, founded a company to make the sprouts for grocery
stores. So it was as economic stakeholders - limited under Johns Hopkins's
conflict-of-interest rules - that they and their collaborators began testing the
effects of sulforaphane on the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The microbe, found
globally but especially in Asia, causes ulcers and increases the risk of getting
gastric cancer threefold to sixfold. Fahey
said the study arose after he learned that two employees at a broccoli sprout
facility with long-standing ulcers had apparently been cured after they took up
snacking on the sprouts. Working
with researchers from the National Scientific Research Center in Nancy, France,
the team found that sulforaphane easily kills H. pylori, a microbe that is
notoriously difficult to eradicate even with combinations of two or three
antibiotics. In
separate studies involving mice that were dosed with a chemical known to cause
stomach cancer, mice pre-treated with sulforaphane had 39 percent fewer tumors. The
findings, published in Tuesday's online edition of Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, do not mean broccoli can cure ulcers or prevent stomach
cancer in people. "One
question is, would you have to eat a ton of broccoli a day to get enough of this
to be effective?" said Frank Gonzalez, a scientist at the National Cancer
Institute. But
Fahey said he was optimistic. "The
levels that are effective in test tubes are levels that could be achieved by
eating a serving or so of broccoli sprouts, based on the chemistry we
know," he said. "This isn't one of those rat studies in which you need
400 times the maximum amount a human could handle." Talalay
said the group was preparing to start a clinical trial in Japan to test the
sprouts' effectiveness in people infected with H. pylori. About 80 percent of
Japanese adults harbor the microbe in their stomachs, one reason that gastric
cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer in Japanese women and No. 2 after lung cancer
in Japanese men. The
microbe is similarly common and deadly in many parts of the world where
antibiotics are unavailable or unaffordable, Talalay said. "Gratifyingly,
this is a dietary approach," he said, "which is the only approach
feasible or practical if you want to knock down the incidence of this very
serious disease in the parts of the world where it is most prevalent." |