To take or not to take luteolin

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chocomousse
chocomousse Member Posts: 157
edited June 2018 in Complementary and Holistic Medicine and Treatment

Natural compound could reduce breast cancer risk in some women

"....Most older women normally have benign lesions in breast tissue," Hyder said. "These lesions typically don't form tumors until they receive the 'trigger'-- in this case, progestin--that attracts blood vessels to cells essentially feeding the lesions causing them to expand." His newest study shows that when the supplement luteolin is administered to human breast cancer cells in the lab, benefits can be observed including the reduction of those vessels "feeding" the cancer cells causing cancer cell death.

Hyder's lab has found that as human breast cancer cells develop, they tend to take on stem cell-like properties, which can make them harder to kill. Here, luteolin was used to monitor stem cell-like characteristics of breast cancer cells and his team saw a vast reduction in this phenomenon, further proving that the natural compound exerts its anti-tumor effects in a variety of ways.

Then, Hyder further tested laboratory mice with breast cancer and found that blood vessel formation and stem cell-like characteristics also were reduced in vivo, or inside the body.

"We feel that luteolin can be effective when injected directly into the bloodstream, so IV supplements may still be a possibility," Hyder said. "But, until the supplement is tested for safety and commercialized, which we hope will happen after further testing and clinical trials, women should continue consuming a healthy diet with fresh fruits and vegetables..."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/15091...

Common autism supplement affects endocrine system

"....Plant-based diets are healthy. Plants are high in flavonoids. So flavonoids are healthy. At least that's the reasoning of many manufacturers of flavonoid-based nutritional supplements. But a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Hormones & Cancer shows that may not be the case. Flavonoids tested in the study affected the endocrine system in ways that in one case promoted cancer and in another repressed it.

"Even outside these specific findings with cancer, what we're saying is that flavonoids are active and not always in good or even predictable ways," says Steven K. Nordeen, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and professor emeritus in the Department of Pathology at the CU School of Medicine.

His study explored the effects of the flavonoids luteolin and quercetin on cell models of breast and endometrial cancer. In over-the-counter supplement form, the first compound, luteolin, is commonly recommended for the treatment of pediatric autism spectrum disorders.

Nordeen and colleagues show that luteolin blocks some of the endocrine effects of the hormone progesterone. Work from another CU Cancer Center investigator, Carol Sartorius, PhD, had previously shown that progesterone expands a population of therapy-resistant, stem cell-like cells in some breast cancers. In the present work, Nordeen showed that luteolin blocked this increase - a beneficial effect. But then in an endometrial cancer cell model, luteolin had two deleterious effects. First, it acted like estrogen to directly stimulate cancer cell growth and second, by again blocking progesterone's action, luteolin disabled the brake that progesterone puts on estrogen-dependent endometrial cancer growth.

What helps in breast cancer hurts in endometrial cancer. But Nordeen says the most important issue is the simple fact that these flavonoids are active and we don't yet know how the body responds to the blood levels of flavonoids reached when taking supplements."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/uoc...

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