Tea Extract Made Cancer Disappear in Lab Tests
Scientists in Scotland are claiming that an ingredient in green tea has been found to successfully treat some types of skin cancer.
The research, which was published in the medical journal Nanomedicine, was performed by scientists at the universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow.
They found that a tea extract, known as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg), had no effect when consumed in tea, but when applied to cancerous cells during laboratory testing, it caused the cells to shrink. Within the first month of testing, it had removed roughly two-thirds of cancerous tumors it was used on.
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"These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments … When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumors every day, in some cases removing them altogether," Dr. Christine Dufes, lead researcher from the University of Strathclyde, said in a statement.
The scientist also found the extract had no other side-effects on cells or tissue. Tests were conducted on two types of skin cancer: epidermoid carcinoma, which forms like scales on the surface of the skin, and melanoma, which often develops in people who have moles on their skin.
In both studies, about 40 percent of the cancerous tumors went away, while 30 percent of tumors shrank in carcinoma cases and 20 percent in melanoma cases shrank as well.
Official statistics show that around 10,000 people in the United Kingdom are diagnosed with melanoma each year, according to the Macmillan Cancer Support Charity.
The cancer fighting properties of EGCg have been showed to work in other laboratory tests at other universities around the world, who have tested the tea extract to treat prostate cancer and leukemia.
"The extract had no effect at all when it was delivered by other means, as every one of these tumors continued to grow. This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries," Dufes said.
