(05-08-15) Avocado compound holds promise for treating leukemia

by Sandeep Godiyal 

(NaturalNews) Avocados have received enormous attention in the press and on social media in recent years. Once shunned as being too "high fat", dieticians, researchers and others in the healthcare community are beginning to realize just how healthy these amazing fruits really are. It is arguable, in fact, that avocados are one of the healthiest fruits on earth, a perfect blend of monounsaturated fats, fiber, protein and a wealth of vitamins, minerals and other compounds that support the well-being of the body. The healthy fats, for instance, support weight loss and good cardiac function, while the fiber in avocados promotes improved digestion. It should come as no surprise, then, that researchers are also uncovering a particular compound in avocados that can help improve health in another way: By treating a specific type of leukemia. Read on to find out more about this amazing research.
New Canadian cancer research offers promising lead
This latest study, whose results have just been published in the journal Cancer Research, is coming out of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and was led by Professor Paul Spanuolo. He and his colleagues were researching acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a form of cancer which originates in the bone marrow. The bone marrow is where stem cells become mature blood cells in a normal person. In a person with AML, however, these blood cells are abnormal. More than 20,000 Americans receive this diagnosis every year, and around 10,000 die from it. The 65+ population (the fastest-growing segment in America) is most vulnerable to this disease and the prognosis is not good: 9 out of 10 seniors who develop AML will die within 5 years of the diagnosis.
What the study showed
This study found that avocados contain a certain compound called avocatin B which they believe has the potential to help treat this very serious form of cancer. What they found, specifically, was that this compound has strong anti-carcinogenic properties and that it is able to seek out and destroy AML cancer cells. Even more importantly, this compound appears to be selective: While it kills off cancer cells, it leaves healthy cells intact, thus minimizing the unfortunate side effects that go along with many traditional cancer treatments.

While the development of an actual clinic therapy is still a long ways off, the researchers have gone through the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine and filed a patent for this compound, thus hopefully paving the way for the future production of a new kind of cancer therapy which can selectively target AML cancer cells without proving to be toxic to the rest of the body.

The University of Waterloo is one of the few in the world which is conducting research on what are called nutraceuticals (the group to which avocatin B belongs). Nutraceuticals are defined as compounds derived from food that have a potential pharmaceutical value. Hopefully, this and other research institutions will continue to expand research into nutraceuticals to come up with safer and more effective cancer treatments than what are now available and offer hope to cancer patients not only for survival but for good quality of life.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com

http://authoritynutrition.com

http://www.truthwiki.org/Avocado/

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