Fish Oils Kill Mouth and Skin Cancer

This is exciting news and just another reason to include trout and salmon in your diet!!

AANP via Carcinogenesis – Fish Oil Kills Skin, Mouth Cancer Cells In Lab – (Tuesday, August 06, 2013)–New research has found that omega-3 fatty acids, contained in oily fish such as salmon and trout, killed human skin and mouth squamous-cell carcinoma cells that had been cultured in the lab, without harming healthy human skin cells. (Oral squamous cell carcinoma is the sixth most common cancer worldwide and one of the difficult and expensive to treat.) Scientists grew lab cultures of cancerous oral and skin cells, along with pre-malignant cells and normal skin and oral cells and treated them with fish oil. The killing of cancer cells while sparing healthy cells was partly due to an over-stimulation of a key growth factor, known as epidermal growth factor, which triggered cell death. Because skin and oral cancers are often easily accessible, there is the potential to deliver targeted doses locally via aerosols or gels. However further research is needed to confirm this and to then define the appropriate therapeutic doses. This research was just released online by the journal Carcinogenesis. It will be published in a future print issue but the full study is now accessible at http://tinyurl.com/lw76umz for subscription or an access fee.

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