Suara.com – So far spinach a lot of processed food for people in Indonesia. This one vegetable has long been believed to have health benefits.
Now a new study from the TAMU Health Science Center reaffirms spinach’s anticancer properties and investigates how the vegetable interacts with gut bacteria and genetics to achieve its beneficial effects.
Spinach inhibits the growth of colon polyps. Of all cases cancer colorectal, hereditary familial type accounts for only 10-15 percent. In addition, only 5-10 percent of polyps develop colorectal cancer.
The TAMU researchers have previously confirmed spinach’s ability to suppress polyp development in mice that have an induced form of cancer similar to that of nongenetic, or “sporadic” human colorectal cancer. About 85-90 percent of colorectal cancer cases are sporadic.
The new study looked at the value of spinach for people with a hereditary form of colorectal cancer called familial adenomatous polyposis.
Familial adenomatous polyps cause the growth of several, sometimes hundreds, of noncancerous colonic polyps. Most people with the condition eventually need surgery to remove the colon, after which they will use potentially toxic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to prevent polyps from growing in the duodenum.
For their study, the researchers fed freeze-dried spinach to mice with familial adenomatous polyposis for 26 weeks. Studies show that consumption of spinach can delay the growth of polyps, delaying the need for intensive care.
The study appears in the journal Gut Microbes.
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