By Stephen Daniells
Curcumin, the natural pigment that gives the spice turmeric its yellow colour, may protect against heart failure - in mice at least - suggests a new study from Canada class. When the pigment was given to mice with enlarged hearts (hypertrophy), heart function was restored and scar formation reduced, report the researchers in the February edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation Lead researcher Peter Liu, scientific director at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health said that curcumin might be a safe and effective means of preventing heart failure in the future, given that it is naturally occurring and readily available at a low cost.”Whether you are young or old; male or female; the larger your heart is, the higher your risk is for developing heart attacks or heart failure in the future. However, until clinical trials are done, we don’t recommend patients to take curcumin routinely. You are better off to take action today by lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, exercising and healthy eating,” he said.

Curcumin has come under the scientific spotlight in recent years, with studies investigating its potential benefits for reducing cholesterol levels, improving cardiovascular health, and fighting cancer.

Some experts recommend however that consumers wishing to make use of curcumin’s properties consume it in supplement form rather than eating more curries, which tend to be rather high in fat in their Western form.

The Canadian researchers found that curcumin appeared to work by preventing abnormal unravelling of the chromosome under stress, in addition to preventing excessive abnormal protein production. The pigment was administered as a curcumin suspension using 0.5 per cent carboxy-methylcellulose solution,

“Curcumin’s ability to shut off one of the major switches right at the chromosome source where the enlargement and scarring genes are being turned on is impressive,” said Liu. However he cautioned that moderation is important, “the beneficial effects of curcumin are not strengthened by eating more of it.”

Specifically, the pigment was found to act on p300-histone acetyltransferase (HAT), reportedly the most important HAT in muscle that “modifies chromatin and associated transcription factors and promotes gene activation, wrote the researchers.

The study was funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

“This study is relevant to the understanding of the inhibitory effect of curcumin on cardiac hypertrophy and related molecular mechanisms,”wrote the researchers.”It also serves to elucidate the dominant signaling pathways leading to cardiac hypertrophy, inflammation, and fibrosis in response to hypertrophic stimuli.”

“Curcumin is a natural polyphenolic compound that has already been used clinically and is approved by the FDA as a safe food additive. Future studies should examine the hypothesis that curcumin may be a safe and effective approach to preventing and treating cardiac hypertrophy and the transition to failure,” they concluded.

Supporting data

In a related article in the same journal, Tatsuya Morimoto and co-workers from the National Hospital Organization in Kyoto report similar findings from a study with rats. The Japanese researchers tested curcumin in two models of heart failure - heart disease associated with high blood pressure in salt-sensitive rats, and surgically-induced myocardial infarction in rats.

They report that, in both cases, the pigment prevented increases in heart muscle wall thickness after heart failure.

“We believe that the use of curcumin, which targets nuclear signaling pathways in cardiomyocytes, will provide a novel therapeutic strategy against heart failure,” wrote Morimoto and co-workers. “Future application of this nontoxic dietary natural compound as a therapeutic agent for heart failure in humans would be particularly interesting.”

Curcumin-based treatments are currently in clinical trials for pancreatic and colorectal cancer patients with promising results.

Sources: Journal of Clinical Investigation
Available online, Free Access, doi: 10.1172/JCI32865
“Curcumin prevents and reverses murine cardiac hypertrophy”
Authors: Hong-Liang Li, C. Liu, G. de Couto, M. Ouzounian, M. Sun, A.-B. Wang, Y. Huang, C.-W. He, Y. Shi, X. Chen, M.P. Nghiem, Y. Liu, M. Chen, F. Dawood, M. Fukuoka, Y. Maekawa, L. Zhang, A. Leask, A.K. Ghosh, L.A. Kirshenbaum, P.P. Liu

Journal of Clinical Investigation
Available online, Free Access, doi: 10.1172/JCI33160
“The dietary compound curcumin inhibits p300 histone acetyltransferase activity and prevents heart failure in rats”
Authors: T. Morimoto, Y. Sunagawa, T. Kawamura, T. Takaya, H. Wada, A. Nagasawa, M. Komeda, M. Fujita, A. Shimatsu, T. Kita, K. Hasegawa

“Chili’s Heat Kills Prostate Cancer Cells”, Forbes, March 16, 2006,
Link: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2006/03/16/hscout531595.html

Capsaicin, the component that gives jalapeno peppers their heat, may also kill prostate cancer cells, a new study suggests.

Initial experiments in cancer cells and mice show that capsaicin causes prostate cancer cells to undergo a kind of suicide. Researchers speculate that, in the future, pills containing capsaicin might be used as therapy to prevent prostate cancer’s return.

According to their report, capsaicin caused almost 80 percent of prostate cancer cells in the mice to die. In addition, prostate cancer tumors treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in untreated mice.

“Capsaicin inhibits the growth of human prostate cancer cell in Petri dishes and mice,” said lead researcher Dr. H. Phillip Koeffler, director of hematology and oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Based on the findings, Koeffler believe the next step is a trial to see if it works in patients with prostate cancer.

The report appears in the March 15 issue of Cancer Research.

Capsaicin probably has several effects, Koeffler said. Most noticeable is its effect in blocking NF-kappa Beta, a molecular mechanism that promotes cancer cell growth, he noted.

In addition, capsaicin also was effective against leukemia, and might be effective in slowing or preventing the growth of other cancers as well, he added.

But it’s still too early to reach for the chili sauce, Koeffler said.

“I am not recommending that people increase their consumption of peppers,” he said. “Our calculation is that you would have to eat 10 habanera peppers three times a week, which would be equivalent to the amount of capsaicin we gave to the mice.”

The researcher believes capsaicin could someday gain a place in adjuvant prostate cancer therapy. For example, it might be used after prostate surgery to kill cancer cells in patients whose blood PSA levels start to rise, indicating the presence of tumors too small to be seen, he said.

The study does highlight the crossover that can occur between conventional and alternative therapies. “We should take note of herbal medicines and then use modern-day techniques to find what the active compounds are and bring them into clinical trials,” Koeffler said.

One expert thinks it’s too early to know if capsaicin will ever be an effective prostate cancer treatment, however.

“Since large amounts of capsaicin have never been given to people, we don’t know what the side effects might be,” cautioned Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. “We don’t know about the right dose or anything.”

Lichtenfeld believes that any trial should be done in patients who are not responsive to other standard therapies. “We are ways away from a clinical trial,” he said. “We need more basic research before we start treating patients.”

Another expert concurred.

“This study does not prove that capsaicin will prove effective in the treatment of prostate cancer in humans,” said Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine. “Nor does it tell us that eating peppers rich in the substance will help prevent such cancer, or forestall its growth. But it provides a compelling argument for clinical study of capsaicin in human prostate cancer to put these questions to the test.”

“This paper should serve to remind us that herbal remedies and pharmacotherapy are often of common origins, differing only in our capacity to identify, purify and package the active ingredients,” Katz said. “This work suggests that the conventional medical community should turn a discriminating eye, rather than a jaded eye, toward time-honored herbal treatments. Many will doubtless prove ineffective when put to the test of high-quality research. But some will pass that test, and we must meticulously distinguish between them.”