Cranberry Juice May Make Chemotherapy Treatment More Effective.

Evan Watson, NatureCity author & contributor

Researchers at Rutgers University and Brown Medical School’s Women and Infants Hospital recently teamed up to study the effects of cranberry juice on treatment resistant ovarian cancer cells.

Cranberries are known to contain antioxidants that when consumed help cleanse and strengthen urinary and gastrointestinal tracts. Studies have also found that people who drink cranberry juice have higher levels of good (HDL) cholesterol and may have improved blood vessel function.

This National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study on cranberries and ovarian cancer cells had encouraging preliminary findings.

The scientists exposed both cranberry treated cancer cells and non-treated cancers cells to chemotherapy. The cancer cells pre-treated with cranberry were killed at a rate 6 times greater than the cells that were not pre-treated with cranberry.

In addition, the growth and spread of some cancer cells also appeared to lessen when exposed to the juice.

Exactly how cranberry juice may kill ovarian cancer cells in not yet known. It may be linked to an antioxidant that is unique to cranberries called A-type proanthocyanidins.

Although much more research needs to be done, women whose disease is becoming therapy resistant may have cause to hope that they can avoid the need for higher doses of chemotherapy that can potentially cause nerve damage and kidney failure.