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Angiogenesis
inhibited by drinking tea
Yihai
Cao and Renhai Cao
Laboratory
of Angiogenesis Research, Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, Karolinska
Institute, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
e-mail: yihai.cao@mtc.ki.se
Consumption
of tea has been shown to inhibit the growth of several tumour types in animals,
including cancers of the lung and oesophagus.
Drinking tea, especially green tea, is also associated with a lower incidence of
human cancer.
The mechanisms of cancer inhibition are not known, although several hypotheses
have been proposed.
We investigated whether drinking green tea could suppress angiogenesis, a
process of blood-vessel growth required for tumour growth and metastasis.
We find that green tea, and one of its components, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG),
significantly prevents the growth of new blood vessels in animals.
This finding indicates that drinking tea may be beneficial for the prevention
and treatment of angiogenesis-dependent diseases, including cancer and blindness
caused by diabetes.
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10201368&dopt=Abstract
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