Will the consumption of berries one day be prescribed in addition to anti-cancer drugs? A study published in the scientific journal Journal of Clinical Pathology nourishes this hope. Researchers at the University of Southampton and King’s College Hospital in London have conducted a first positive test on the impact of berries on cancer therapy. They evaluated the effect of an extract of chokeberry berries, a shrub native to North America, on pancreatic cancer cell samples.
Pancreatic cancer is a rare but very serious cancer. It is difficult to treat and the chances of survival are reduced to less than 5% for patients five years after diagnosis.
The study found that when berry extracts were used in addition to gemcitabine, a cancer-fighting drug, more diseased cells died than when treatment alone was given.
On the other hand, this result was observed only on cancer cells. No reaction was observed in healthy human cells.
For researchers, this role of berry efficiency booster is based on the famous polyphenols, these antioxidants that are found in number in red fruits. These molecules would be able to reduce the number of harmful cells.
A line of thought
“It is too early to conclude that the polyphenols extracted from blackberries have an effect on patients with pancreatic cancer”, takes care to specify one of the authors of the study. It is also premature to recommend berry supplementation as part of conventional chemotherapy. But these studies suggest innovative approaches to try to improve the treatment of a cancer for which there has been little scientific progress in recent decades, the study concludes.
In the past, several studies have attributed beneficial properties of berries on memoryor against cellular aging in particular.
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