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| Eating Broccoli Could Guard Against Arthritis |
Broccoli has previously been associated with reduced cancer risk but this is the first major study into its effects on joint health. With funding from both Arthritis Research UK and the Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC), the £650,000 project will explore how sulforaphane may act to slow or prevent the development of osteoarthritis. It will prepare the way for the first patient trials and could lead to safe new ways of preventing and treating this painful disease.
Sulforaphane is a bioactive compound found in cruciferous vegetables, particularly broccoli. Eating broccoli leads to a high level of sulforaphane in the blood, but scientists don't yet know if the sulforaphane gets into joints insufficient amounts to be effective. This is one of the things that the UEA team hopes to discover. Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability in the UK where it affects around six million people.
It is a degenerative joint disease which gradually destroys the cartilage in the joints, particularly in the hands, feet, spine, hips and knees of older it people. There is currently no effective treatment other than pain relief or joint replacement.
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| Eating Broccoli Could Guard Against Arthritis |
Prof lan Clark, of UEA's School of Biological Sciences, who is leading the research said: "The UK has an aging population and developing new strategies for combating age-related diseases such as osteoarthritis is vital –to improve the quality of life for sufferers but also to reduce the economic burden on society."
As part of the three-year project, the UEA team will also investigate the effects of other dietary compounds on osteoarthritis, including dially disulphide which is found in high amounts in garlic and also appears to slow the destruction of cartilage in laboratory models.
A concentrated extract of freeze dried broccoli sprouts cut development of bladder tumors in an animal model by more than half, according to a report in the March 1 issue of Cancer Research.
This finding reinforces human epidemiologic studies that have suggested that eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli is associated with reduced risk for bladder cancer, according to the study's senior investigator, Yuesheng Zhang, MD, PhD, professor of oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. "Although.this is an animal study. It provides potent evidence that eating vegetables is beneficial in bladder cancer prevention," he said.
There is strong evidence that the protective action of cruciferous vegetables derives at least in part from isothyiocyanates (ITC), a group of phytochemicals with well-known cancer preventive activities. "The bladder is particularly responsive to this group of natural chemicals." Zhang said. "In our experiments, the broccoli sprout ITCs after oral administration were selectively delivered to the bladder tissues through urinary excretion."
Other cruciferous vegetables with ITCs include mature broccoli, cabbage, kale, collard greens and others. Broccoli sprouts have approximately 30 times more ITCs than mature broccoli, and the sprout extract used by the researchers contains approximately 600 times as much.
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| Eating Broccoli Could Guard Against Arthritis |
Although animals that had the most protection against development of bladder cancer were given high doses of the extract, Zhang said humans at increased risk for this cancer likely do not need to eat huge amounts of broccoli sprouts in order to derive protective benefits. "Epidemiologic studies have shown that dietary ITCs and cruciferous vegetable intake are inversely associated with bladder cancer risk in humans.
It is possible that ITC doses much lower than those given to the rats in this study may be adequate for bladder cancer prevention," he said. Zhang and his colleagues tested the ability of the concentrate to prevent bladder tumors in five groups of rats.
The first group acted as a control, while the second group was given only the broccoli extract to test for safety. The remaining three groups were given a chemical, N-butyl-N-(4-hydroxybutyl) nitrosamine (BBN) in drinking water, which induces bladder cancer. Two of these groups were given the broccoli extract in diet, beginning two weeks before the carcinogenic chemical was delivered.
In the control group and the group given only the extract, no tumors developed, and there was no toxicity from the extract in the rats.
About 96 percent of animals given only BBN developed an average of almost two tumors each of varying sizes. By comparison, about 74 percent of animals given a low dose of the extract developed cancer, and the number of tumors per rat was 1.39.
The group given the high dose of extract had even fewer tumors. About 38 percent of this high-dose group developed cancer, and the average number of tumors per animal was only .46 and, unlike the other animals, the majority were very small in size.
