Bitter melon juice may prevent pancreatic cancer

PTI
The Hindu
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Washington - Scientists have discovered that juice from
bitter melon also known as bitter gourd or ‘karela’, used
for centuries against diabetes in the folk medicines of
India and China, can prevent pancreatic cancer.

Researchers from the University of Colorado, Denver,
found that bitter melon juice restricts the ability of
pancreatic cancer cells to metabolise glucose, cutting
the cells’ energy source and eventually killing them in
mouse models.

“Three years ago researchers showed the effect of bitter
melon extract on breast cancer cells only in a Petri
dish. This study goes much, much farther,” said Rajesh
Agarwal, co-programme leader of Cancer Prevention and
Control at the CU Cancer Centre and professor at the
Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“We used the juice — people especially in Asian countries
are already consuming it in quantity — to show that it
affects the glucose metabolism pathway to restrict energy
and kill pancreatic cancer cells,” Agarwal said.

Agarwal’s interest came from connecting the dots of
existing research in a novel way. Diabetes tends to
presage pancreatic cancer and bitter melon has been shown
to effect type-II diabetes, and has been used for
centuries in China and India.

Following this line of thinking, Agarwal and colleagues
wondered what would happen if they closed out the middle
man of diabetes and directly explored the link between
bitter melon and pancreatic cancer.

The result, Agarwal said, is, “alteration in metabolic
events in pancreatic cancer cells and an activation of
the AMP-activated protein kinase, an enzyme that
indicates low energy levels in the cells.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, bitter melon also regulates
insulin secretion by pancreatic beta cells. After studies
in cell cultures, the group showed that mouse models of
pancreatic cancer that were fed bitter melon juice were
60 per cent less likely to develop the disease than
controls.

“It’s a very exciting finding. Many researchers are
engineering new drugs to target cancer cells’ ability to
supply themselves with energy, and here we have a
naturally-occurring compound that may do just that,”
Agarwal said in a statement.

The study was published in the journal Carcinogenesis.

Keywords: Diabetes,*bitter gourd juice,*pancreatic cancer

More at:

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/hea...cle4504912.ece

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

o o o

o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used
for the educational purposes of research and open
discussion. The contents of this post may not have been
authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright
law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely
not be read, considered or answered if it does not
contain your full legal name, current e-mail and postal
addresses, and live-voice telephone number.

o Posted for information and discussion. Views
expressed by others are not necessarily those of the
poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted
material the use of which may or may not have been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This
material is being made available in efforts to advance
the understanding of environmental, political, human
rights, economic, democratic, scientific, social, and
cultural, etc., issues. It is believed that this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research, comment,
discussion and educational purposes by subscribing to
USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article
for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Since newsgroup posts are being removed by forgery by one
or more net terrorists, this post may be reposted several
times.