Type of Tomato Product Determines Power Against Prost...(mixing drying etc.) may have an effect o...),Health

And a dietary component to prostate cancer risk and protection could help explain well-known geographical differences in the incidence of the disease.

"We were trying to show that a combination of two different entities in tomato products which appear out of the preparation of tomato powder might interact together," Mossine said.

For this study, rats were divided into four groups of 20: one group received a control diet, another group received a diet that included tomato paste, a third group received a diet including tomato paste plus additional FruHis, and the final group received tomato powder alone.

All rats were injected with chemicals to induce prostate cancer.

Rats fed the tomato paste-plus-FruHis survived the longest, 51 weeks without developing tumors, compared with 50 weeks in the tomato powder group, 45 weeks in the tomato paste group, and 40 weeks in the control group. The study only lasted 51 weeks, so the tomato paste plus FruHis group could have even longer survival times, Mossine noted.

Prostate tumors were found in 10 percent of the animals that had consumed tomato paste plus FruHis, compared with 30 percent of animals receiving tomato powder alone, 25 percent receiving tomato paste alone and 60 percent in the control group.

"Our study shows that one of these carbohydrates that we were suspecting interacts with lycopene, at least in that model that we were using," Mossine said.

"This is a very reasonable basic laboratory assessment of this issue with regard to prostate cancer risk," said Dr. K. Scott Coffield, a professor of surgery at Texas A & M Health Science Center College of Medicine and a urologist-oncologist with Scott & White. "What will be necessary at this point will be some translational research to take this int
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