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Dr. Kucuk’s research indicates that lycopene supplements may prevent cancer. |
For nutritional value and cancer prevention, tomatoes do the trick, says Omer Kucuk, MD, WSU professor of internal medicine and oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. In a recently released study, Dr. Kucuk and his colleagues found that lycopene, the substance that makes tomatoes red, may help prevent cancer and may also be useful in treating men who are already diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Men with localized prostate cancer were treated with lycopene supplements for three weeks prior to prostate removal. Compared with men who had no intervention, the men who used lycopene had smaller tumors, their cancer was more frequently confined, levels of serum PSA were reduced, and the tumors showed signs of regression and decreased malignancy in just three weeks.
Previous epidemiological studies found an association between consumption of tomato products and decreased risk of prostate cancer. Dr. Kucuk’s clinical trial builds on that finding to suggest an even more direct relationship between lycopene and prostate cancer.
This research was presented by Dr. Kucuk for the first time at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in April. Other key investigators in the study were: Drs. David Wood, Wael Sakr and Fazlul Sarkar.