Hops, the flower cones used in beer-making, can also reduce breast cancer
risk.
Basically the flower
heads of the plant are also used to make dietary supplements intended to treat
menopause symptoms and other conditions.
As hormone
replacement therapy has been linked to risk of breast cancer, some women use
hop extract as an alternative.
However, the efficacy
and potential toxicity of botanicals are still being studied.
Now, researchers from
the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research at the University of Illinois at
Chicago reveal fresh evidences of a possible link between hop extract that
activates a chemical pathway in cells and reduced breast cancer risk.
Researchers, led by
Judy Bolton applied hops extract to two different breast cell lines to see if
they would affect estrogen metabolism, a key mechanism in breast cancer.
One compound,
6-prenylnarigenin, or 6-PN, increased a detoxification pathway in the cells
that has been linked to a lower risk for breast cancer.
"We need to
further explore this possibility, but our results suggest that 6-PN could have
anti-cancer effects," Bolton said.
In addition to 6-PN,
Bolton and her colleagues studied 8-prenylnarigenin (8-PN), isoxanthohumol (IX)
and xanthohumol (XH) for their effects on estrogen metabolism in breast cells.
According to Bolton,
8-PN showed only a slight increase of metabolism in breast cells, while the
other two compounds did not have significant effects in either cell line.
Breast cancer is one
of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in women in the U.S.; about one in eight
U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over their lifetime.
According to the
American Cancer Society, an estimated 246,660 new cases of invasive breast
cancer and 61,000 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer are expected in women in the U.S. this
year.
The study has been
published in Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Representative Image
Source: ANI
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