Green Tea May Interfere With Common Cancer Drug
Green tea, long touted as a healthy beverage full of cancer-fighting elements, may in fact counteract the beneficial effects of a commonly used anti-cancer agent, according to new medical research.
Some components in green tea may prevent the drug Velcade, a widely used cancer agent also called bortezomib, from killing cancerous tumor cells, according to researchers from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
Researchers stressed that the negative effects of green tea only appeared in patients being treated with bortezomib and not other cancer-fighting agents. However, patients currently undergoing bortezomib therapy should refrain from drinking green tea products, especially highly concentrated forms of teas which are widely sold in liquid and capsule forms across the country, the researchers cautioned.
In the study, researchers evaluated the impact of green tea compounds on the efficacy of bortezomib and looked at how the impact might affect the treatments of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, and glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor.
While bortezomib typically fights cancer by inducing tumor cell death, the researchers were surprised to find that some polyphenols and other green tea components actually prevented bortezomib from doing its job. The green tea polyphenols appeared to have the potential to completely negate the therapeutic uses of bortezomib, according to the study.
While green tea components appear to interfere with the ability of bortezomib to combat cancerous tumor growth, other cancer-fighting agents may not be similarly affected, researchers said. Green tea is a proven beneficial herb that has been shown to improve the anticancer effects of other drugs, according to the study.
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