ANAHEIM, Calif., April 20 (UPI) -- A study by two Italian universities presented Wednesday suggests green tea catechins, chemicals extracted from green tea leaves, help prevent prostate cancer.
The team, from the University of Parma and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, said only one man in a group of 32 at high risk for prostate cancer developed the disease after one-year's oral administration of green tea catechins.
In a control group, 9 of 30 high-risk men developed the disease.
"Numerous earlier studies, including ours, have demonstrated that green tea catechins, or pure EGCG (a major component of GTCs), inhibited cancer cell growth in laboratory models," said lead researcher Saverio Bettuzzi. "We wanted to conduct a clinical trial to find out whether catechins could prevent cancer in men. The answer clearly is yes."
Bettuzzi said his team had found EGCG targets prostate cancer cells specifically for death, without damaging the benign controls. "EGCG induced death in cancer cells, not normal cells, inducing Clusterin expression" said Bettuzzi.
The researchers presented their results Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif., during the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
