Eat Broccoli And Prevent Breast Cancer

Some people don't like their vegetables, but maybe they would change their minds if you told them that eating broccoli could help to prevent breast cancer. At the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have found in a study that sulforaphane, a component found in broccoli and broccoli sprouts, killed breast cancer cells in human and mice cultures. In the experiment the researchers took mice infected with breast cancer cells and and gave them shots with different mixes of sulforaphane from the broccoli. When they measured the amount of breast cancer cells in the mice after a certain period of time they found that the number of breast cancer cells decreased and that no new tumors had been formed. Then they tested the mixes on human cultures with the same results, decreases with no new tumors. Along with those results the mixes didn't have much effect on the healthy cells. Certain parts of the sulforaphane injection gets absorbed by the body and helps to kill the cancer cells and stop tumors from developing. The amounts of sulforaphane injected in the mice and human cultures were more than you get from one serving of broccoli or sprouts, but servings add up.

This is biology related because it studies cancer cells. Cancer is a devastating disease that kills many people every year. Having cancer harms your healthy cells and affects your immune system greatly which is why it is important to be very hygienic if you have cancer to avoid becoming sick. This information can be helpful because doctors and scientists can now try to find someway to put sulforaphane into cancer medicine, treatments, and cures. The medicine used in kemotheraphy attacks cancer cells, but it also attacks a person's healthy cells too, which never benefits the cancer carrier. Sulforaphane had little effect on normal cells and that could be a key factor when trying to help someone with breast cancer be cured. When someone is battling cancer you would want them to have as many healthy cells as possible and it's hard to keep up your normal cells when you use a treatment that kills the bad cells as well as the good ones.

We should care about this because it could possibly mean a whole new type of treatment with less harmful side effects. This could mean stronger immune systems for people with breast cancer. This could mean losing less people every year and saving lives that are the risk of being lost, giving people the chance they never thought they would have. Even though the possible treatments for sulforaphane aren't clear yet, when they are, hopefully it will be the important something people have been waiting for.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503135432.htm