Source: NaturalNews

It’s well-established that exposure to ionizing radiation can trigger mutations and other genetic damage and cause normal cells to become malignant. So it seems amazing how mainstream medicine frequently dismisses the idea that medical imaging tests from mammograms to CT scans could play much of a role in causing breast cancer. Take this example from the web site for Cornell University’s Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors:

In answer to the question “Is ionizing radiation a cause of breast cancer?”, the Cornell experts say “Yes” and note “.. female breast tissue is highly susceptible to radiation effects.” But then they pooh-pooh the possible hazard from mammography x-rays saying the risk …”should not be a factor in individual decisions to undergo this procedure. The same is true for most diagnostic x-ray procedures.”

If that’s not confusing enough, they turn around and state: “Nonetheless, unnecessary radiation exposures should be avoided and continued vigilance is required to ensure that the benefits associated with specific procedures outweigh the future risks.”

Why radiation causes breast cancer

Common sense suggests there is plenty of reason to be worried about radiation causing breast cancer. And now there’s a new reason to be concerned. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered that radiation exposure can alter cells’ microenvironment (the environment surrounding cells). And that greatly raises the odds future cells will become cancerous.

The reason is that signals from a cell’s microenvironment, altered by radiation exposure, can cause a cell’s phenotype (made up of all its biochemical and physical characteristics) to change by regulating or de-regulating the way a cell uses its genes. The result can be a cell that not only becomes pre-cancerous but that passes this pre-malignant condition on to future cells.

“Our work shows that radiation can change the microenvironment of breast cells, and this in turn can allow the growth of abnormal cells with a long-lived phenotype that have a much greater potential to be cancerous,” Paul Yaswen, a cell biologist and breast cancer research specialist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, said in a statement to the press.

“Many in the cancer research community, especially radiobiologists, have been slow to acknowledge and incorporate in their work the idea that cells in human tissues are not independent entities, but are highly communicative with each other and with their microenvironment,” he added.

For their study, Yaswen and his research teams used human mammary epithelial cells (HMECs), the cells that line breast ducts, where most breast cancers start. When placed in a culture dish, the vast majority of HMECs display a phenotype that allows them to divide between five and 20 times until they become what is known as senescent, or unable to divide. However, there are also some variants of these cells which have a phenotype that allows them to continue dividing for many weeks in culture. Known as a vHMEC phenotype, this type of breast cell arises spontaneously and is more susceptible to malignancy because it lacks a tumor-suppressing protein dubbed p16.

To find out what radiation exposure does to the cellular environment and how it could impact the future of cell behavior, the Berkeley Lab scientists grew sets of HMECs from normal breast tissue in culture dishes for about a week. Then they zapped each set with a single treatment of a low-to-moderate dose of radiation and compared the irradiated cells to sets of breast cells that had not been irradiated.

The results, just published in the on-line journal Breast Cancer Research, showed that four to six weeks after the radiation exposure, the normal breast cancer cells had stopped dividing far earlier than they would have normally — and this premature cell senescence had accelerated the outgrowth of vHMECS.

“However, by getting normal cells to prematurely age and stop dividing, the radiation exposure created space for epigenetically altered cells that would otherwise have been filled by normal cells. In other words, the radiation promoted the growth of pre-cancerous cells by making the environment that surrounded the cells more hospitable to their continued growth,” Yaswen explained in the press statement.

The researchers pointed out that the levels of radiation used in their experiments were not as much as a woman would be exposed to during a single routine mammogram but were comparable to those a woman could receive during a CT scans or radiotherapy “and could represent sources of concern.”

Of course, women are often pushed to get annual mammograms, raising their overall radiation exposure through the years. And, as NaturalNews has reported, previous research has already provided compelling evidence linking mammography to breast cancer.

For example, a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine found that the start of screening mammography programs throughout Europe has been associated with increased incidence of breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/024901.html). And a Johns Hopkins study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded radiation exposure from mammograms could trigger malignancies in women at risk for genetic breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/025560_c…).

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/fac…

(Reprinted from NaturalNews)

University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists say they’ve found a compound that could help prevent and potentially treat breast cancer. It’s not a drug or a new radiation treatment but a natural component of broccoli and broccoli sprouts. And it has the remarkable ability to target cancer stem cells – the specific cells responsible for fueling the growth of cancerous breast tumors.

The researchers tested the broccoli compound, known as sulforaphane, in animal studies as well as in breast cancer cell cultures in the lab. Their findings, which were recently published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, showed sulforaphane not only targeted and killed cancer stem cells, but it also prevented any new malignancies from growing.

What makes this such an extraordinary breakthrough? Current chemotherapies don’t do anything to stop cancer stem cells. That’s why cancer can recur and spread after chemotherapy. So many researchers have long believed that to control cancer, you have to find a way to eliminate cancer stem cells — and now it appears sulforaphane does exactly that.

“Sulforaphane has been studied previously for its effects on cancer, but this study shows that its benefit is in inhibiting the breast cancer stem cells. This new insight suggests the potential of sulforaphane or broccoli extract to prevent or treat cancer by targeting the critical cancer stem cells,” study author Duxin Sun, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the U-M College of Pharmacy and a researcher with the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in a statement to the media.

For their study, the U-M researchers first worked with mice with breast cancer. They used several well-documented methods to assess the number of cancer stem cells in the animals’ breast tumors. Then the research team injected varying concentrations of sulforaphane extracted from broccoli into the mice.

The results? There was a dramatic decrease in the number of cancer stem cells after treatment with sulforaphane, but there was little effect on the normal cells.What’s more, the cancer cells from mice treated with sulforaphane were unable to generate new tumors.

Next, the scientists tested sulforaphane on human breast cancer cell cultures in the lab. Once again, they found the numbers of cancer stem cells plummeted after exposure to the broccoli compound.

“This research suggests a potential new treatment that could be combined with other compounds to target breast cancer stem cells. Developing treatments that effectively target the cancer stem cell population is essential for improving outcomes,” study co-author Max S. Wicha, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Oncology and director of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in the press statement.

The scientists pointed out that concentrations of sulforaphane used in the study were higher than what can be normally achieved by eating broccoli or broccoli sprouts. However, previous research suggests the body can absorb high enough concentrations of sulforaphane from broccoli extract to impact cancer. Currently, the U-M research team is working to develop a method to extract and preserve sulforaphane. They are also planning a future clinical trial to test sulforaphane both as a prevention and treatment for breast cancer.

NaturalNews has previously reported on additional health benefits of broccoli. For example, broccoli sprouts have been found to potentially play a protective role in the prevention of gastric cancer by reducing colonization of the cancer and ulcer-linked bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) in the body (http://www.naturalnews.com/026018_s…).

Research by University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) scientists also found that sulforaphane in broccoli appears to protect against respiratory inflammation that causes asthma, allergic rhinitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other conditions that make it hard to breathe (http://www.naturalnews.com/025771_b…).

Editor’s note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired.

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…

Learn more:
The world’s most powerful Sulforaphane Dietary Supplement. (Download the free report)