14 DAY TRIAL // New data presented at a recent conference seem to indicate that there exists a natural alternative to current medication for preventing the development of esophageal cancer. Experts say that freeze-dried strawberries demonstrated a marked potential to stop the onset of this terrible disease.
The study was presented yesterday, April 6, at the 102nd annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR 2011). The conference was held in Orlando, Florida, between April 2-6.
Researchers in charge of the new study explain that people who eat strawberries exhibit a significant reduction in the number of precancerous lesions that are usually indicative of the development of esophageal cancer.
Other types of cancer-related molecular events were also found to decrease in number and intensity. The new study was conducted by a team of experts at the Ohio State University (OSU).
“We concluded from this study that six months of eating strawberries is safe and easy to consume,” says Tong Chen, the lead researcher on the investigation. She adds that the cancer-related results are only preliminary and that more work is needed to certify the discovery.
Chen, MD, PhD, holds an appointment as an assistant professor with the OSU Department of Internal Medicine Division of Medical Oncology. She is also the leader of the study team, and a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program.
The new investigation was conducted because, statistically speaking, esophageal cancer is the sixth leading cause of death worldwide, and the third most widely spread form of gastrointestinal cancer.
OSU researchers are studying esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), which is the most common form of esophageal cancer, affecting about 95 percent of all patients. The investigation was conducted in China, because people here have a high incidence of SCC.
In the new investigation, participants were asked to consume freeze-dried strawberries each day. They ate about 60 grams of fruit daily for 6 months, and were analyzed again at the end of the study period.
The reason why the strawberries were freeze-dried rather than served naturally is because removing their water content allowed scientists to focus the active chemicals within by more than 1,000 percent.
At the end of the study, 29 of the 36 test participants exhibited a significant decrease in the histological grade of the precancerous lesions usually associated with the development of esophageal cancer.
“Our study is important because it shows that strawberries may slow the progression of precancerous lesion in the esophagus,” Chen explains.
“Strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other chemopreventive drugs for the prevention of esophageal cancer. But, we will need to test this in randomized placebo-controlled trials in the future,” she concludes.