According to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) the natural chemicals in pomegranate juice may slow the growth of prostate cancer.
The key chemicals in pomegranates, called ellagitannins, are also found in strawberries, raspberries and muscadine grapes. Once digested the ellagitannis turn into urolithins which researchers felt may slow the growth of prostate cancer cells.
To test their theory, researchers made their own extract from pomegranate skin and measured the ellagitannis in the juice. The then tested the extract on male lab mice that had been grafted with human prostate cancer. Some mice were injected while other were fed the juice. They also fed or injected other mice with a placebo that contained no pomegranate for comparison.
Findings were that the mice receiving the pomegranate juice had slower prostate tumor growth than those fed or injected with the placebo. As a last step the researchers were given urolithins, either orally or by injection, and found that those pomegranate derived chemicals gathered mostly in the prostate, colon and intestinal tissues of the mice.
More research is needed to evaluate if these results translate in the same manner in humans.
[Source: Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry]
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