Wine and Breast Cancer Therapy
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute believe that resveratrol, the component of red wine most often tied to health benefits, can boost the effectiveness of the immunosuppressant rapamycin, which is used to slow the growth of breast cancer. Here’s Charis Eng, Chair of the clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute:
“Unfortunately, after a while, the cancer cells develop resistance to rapamycin. Our findings show that resveratrol seems to mitigate rapamycin-induced drug resistance in breast cancers, at least in the laboratory. If these observations hold true in the clinic setting, then enjoying a glass of red wine or eating a bowl of boiled peanuts — which has a higher resveratrol content than red wine — before rapamycin treatment for cancer might be a prudent approach.”
Information about the pilot study can be found here.
Information about increases in breast cancer incidence among wine drinkers here, just to prove that nothing is easy.
February 16th, 2011 at 3:10 PM
One word- “Boiled peanuts”