Re: Lycopene beats prostate cancer

From: Ed Friedman (ed_at_math.uchicago.edu)
Date: 08/16/04 

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:08:10 -0500

The fact that lycopene is useful for prostate cancer treatment and
prevention has been known for a few years now.

Quoting from Dr. Leibowitz's web site:

Lycopene - A case report in the 2001 Journal of Urology described a
patient who had advanced, metastatic, hormone refractory prostate
cancer. He had bone pain and was put on hospice. He treated himself with
Lyc-O-Mato, a form of lycopene, that is the type of lycopene supplement
we used in the paragraph above. Unlike our results, however, this
patient’s bone pain went away; he went off the hospice program, and
remained in remission more than a year later. It seems clear that
natural products containing lycopene, such as tomato sauce, may be even
more effective. For now, we believe there is no harm in using lycopene,
and there may be unexpected benefit.

An article in Cancer Epidemiology, “Biomarkers and Prevention,” Volume
10, August 2001, pages 861-868, studied lycopene supplementation in
patients with prostate cancer. Men were treated with 15 mg of lycopene
twice daily for three weeks prior to radical prostatectomy. PSA levels
declined by 18% in the lycopene group, and increased by 14% in the
control group. The results of this study, however, stated that “no
conclusion can be drawn because of the small sample size.”

An article in the British Journal of Urology, Volume 92, 2003, pages
375-378, reports on a small study of 54 patients. Half of them were
randomized to undergo orchiectomy alone; the other half orchiectomy plus
lycopene beginning the same day of orchiectomy. After two years, PSA’s
were 9.02 in the orchiectomy group, and 3.01 in the orchiectomy plus
lycopene group. Seven patients who had orchiectomy alone progressed;
only two patients on lycopene progressed, with a P value of less than
.05. Twelve subjects in the orchiectomy group died (22%), whereas only
seven (13%) in the orchiectomy plus lycopene group died. P value was
less than .001. The editorialist comments that “if the results of this
randomized, controlled trial are not a product of chance, and can be
reproduced, it will have a major impact on the treatment of prostate
cancer.”

In nature the best sources of lycopene include fruits that have a lot of
red color to them. Tomatoes are the fruit that most men think of when
they are considering lycopene supplementation. Cooked tomatoes have more
lycopene than raw tomatoes; however, watermelon has much more lycopene
than tomatoes.