`Olive Oil May Be Useful in Brain Cancer Chemoprevention - Olive Oil Times
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Olive Oil May Be Useful in Brain Cancer Chemoprevention

By Jedha Dening
Feb. 12, 2016 12:20 UTC

Glioblastoma mul­ti­forme (GBM) is an aggres­sive type of brain can­cer that rarely sees a patient live beyond 15 months post treat­ment, despite hav­ing surgery, radio­ther­apy and chemother­apy. GBMs have a very inva­sive nature and can break down the blood-brain bar­rier, caus­ing cere­bral edema and severe symp­toms in patients. It is notably one of the most dif­fi­cult can­cers to treat.

Extra vir­gin olive oil (EVOO) is known to help pre­vent a vari­ety can­cers such as col­orec­tal, prostate, lung, endome­trial and breast can­cer. A new study, pub­lished in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, Jan 2016, reports that the ​“chemo­pre­ven­tive abil­ity of EVOO is not only due to fatty acids but also to its con­tent of phe­no­lic com­pounds such as polyphe­nols and flavonoids.”
See Also:Olive Oil Health Benefits
It is known that oleu­ropein, a phe­no­lic com­pound in olive oil, inhibits glioblas­toma cell migra­tion. It is also known that oleo­can­thal, a pow­er­ful anti-inflam­ma­tory com­pound in olive oil, down-reg­u­lates cyclooxygenase‑2 (COX‑2) expres­sion in colon can­cer cells.

However, until now, a study inves­ti­gat­ing the anti-inflam­ma­tory effects of EVOO com­pounds against cytokines (inflam­ma­tory mol­e­cules) in glioblas­toma cells had never before been con­ducted.

This new in-vitro study shows that EVOO does in fact reduce the pro­duc­tion of chronic inflam­ma­tion on glioblas­toma pro­gres­sion via one par­tic­u­lar proin­flam­ma­tory mol­e­cule, tumor necro­sis fac­tor alpha (TNF‑a). The proin­flam­ma­tory cytokine, TNF‑a, directly induces COX‑2, an inflam­ma­tory bio­marker in glioblas­toma cells.

In the study, the cells were incu­bated for 24 hours with and with­out the pres­ence of olive oil com­pounds, oleic acid, tyrosol and hydrox­y­ty­rosol. The cells were then sub­ject to TNF‑a stim­u­la­tion for a fur­ther 24 hours.

As expected, TNF‑a caused a marked increase in COX‑2 expres­sion. Oleic acid inhib­ited this expres­sion by 61.7 per­cent, tyrosol inhib­ited it by 36.5 per­cent, while hydrox­y­ty­rosol did not show any sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences.

Further inves­ti­ga­tions were con­ducted to under­stand the mech­a­nisms behind these inhibitory actions.

In a con­cen­tra­tion-depen­dent man­ner there was, ​“inhi­bi­tion of TNF‑a induced down-stream sig­nalling path­ways,” the path­ways vary­ing for both oleic acid and tyrosol. The researchers also inves­ti­gated another proin­flam­ma­tory mol­e­cule secreted by glioblas­toma cells, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). Again, the results showed that oleic acid and tyrosol sig­nif­i­cantly reduced TNF‑a induced PGE2 by 45.4 per­cent and 71.5 per­cent, respec­tively.

Lastly, the researchers ana­lyzed the effects of oleic acid and tyrosol on human brain microvas­cu­lar endothe­lial cell migra­tion ​“by directly tar­get­ing the chemo­tac­tic activ­ity of PGE2.The results showed that the olive oil com­pounds block the endothe­lial cell migra­tion through dif­fer­ent cel­lu­lar mech­a­nisms.”

Overall, what the research shows is that dietary inter­ven­tions such as using EVOO can help reduce brain tumors by down-reg­u­lat­ing proin­flam­ma­tory mol­e­cules and pre­vent­ing chronic inflam­ma­tion within the microen­vi­ron­ment that dri­ves the glioblas­toma growth.

The researchers said the results of the study sug­gest that, ​“Given that can­cer devel­op­ment and pro­gres­sion is a mul­ti­step process, sup­ple­men­ta­tion with olive oil may rep­re­sent an effi­cient dietary inter­ven­tion in the pre­ven­tion and/or man­age­ment of glioblas­toma.”

More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles