Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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27.01.2014 |
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Quercetin boosts inhibitory effect of green tea for prostate cancer
Green tea protects against prostate cancer the Italian trial would seem to suggest. But if you look at the epidemiological studies on the subject you'll notice that green tea has no protective effect just as often as it does protect against prostate cancer. [Mol Nutr Food Res. 2011 Jun;55(6):905-20.]
This may be because some men's bodies rapidly convert the bioactive substances in tea – see a few of them below – into less active components. This is partly due to the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT for short], which attaches methyl groups to the compounds in tea thus reducing their cancer-inhibitory effect.
The Americans tested their theory on mice that they had injected with prostate cancer cells. The animals in the experimental group were given an extract of green tea [GT] in their drinking water. The human equivalent of the dose that the mice were given was 5-6 cups of green tea a day.
Some of the mice were given food that contained 0.2 or 0.4 percent quercetin. The human equivalent of the doses that the mice were given was 1 or 2 g quercetin per day.
The figure below shows that the green tea extract slowed down the growth of the tumour, and that the inhibitory effect of the extract increased the more quercetin the mice had in their food.
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The figure above shows that the more quercetin the mice had been given, the more bioactive ingredients from the green tea the researchers found in the tumours.
The researchers were also able to ascertain that administration of both quercetin and green tea extract inhibited the body’s synthesis of COMT, and boosted the activity of suicide genes in the tumour cells.
"These results warrant future human intervention studies to confirm the combined effect of green tea and quercetin in prostate cancer prevention and treatment", the researchers write.
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