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Walnuts may cut breast cancer risk

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-23 09:29

WASHINGTON: By eating walnuts, women could reduce their risk of breast cancer, researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, West Virginia, found that lab mice bred to develop breast cancer had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer if fed the human equivalent of a handful of walnuts a day.

"We know that a healthy diet overall prevents all manner of chronic diseases," Elaine Hardman, one of the researchers working on the study, said in a statement.

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She said while the study was done with laboratory animals, likely the same mechanism would be at work in people. "Walnuts contain multiple ingredients that, individually, have been shown to slow cancer growth including omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants and phytosterols," her team wrote in a summary presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting.

The researchers used specially bred mice that normally always develop breast cancer. Half got the human equivalent of two ounces of walnuts per day and half got a normal diet. The mice eating the walnuts had fewer and smaller breast tumors and those that did get them got them later than the other mice.

Drug helps prevent diabetes

A drug used to reduce sugar levels in diabetics appears to be useful in delaying or even preventing the disease in people predisposed to developing diabetes, a study in Japan has found.

The study found that fewer people who were given the generic drug voglibose went on to develop diabetes compared to those who received placebo.

While the study was supposed to last three years, researchers found that voglibose was much better than placebo before the end of the first year, and an independent monitoring panel terminated the study early.

Reuters