Gingko Biloba May Help Fight Cancer

March 1, 2006 04:01:12 PM PST

WEDNESDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- Studies in mice suggest the popular herbal remedy Gingko biloba might help fight human brain and breast tumors.

Mice treated with an extract of Gingko biloba leaves both before and after being implanted with human breast or brain tumors had decreased expression of a cell receptor -- peripheral-type benzodiazepine receptor (PBR) -- associated with invasive cancer, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington, D.C.

This drop in PBR expression slowed the growth of breast tumors by 80 percent in treated vs. untreated mice. The effect lasted for as long as the mice received the Gingko biloba extract, the researchers added. Decreased expression of PBR also reduced the size of the brain tumors, but only temporarily so, and to a lesser degree.

"It is very encouraging that Gingko biloba appeared to reduce the aggressiveness of these cancers, because it suggests that the leaves could be useful in some early-stage diseases to prevent them from becoming invasive, or spreading," study senior author Vassilios Papadopoulos, director of the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization and associate vice president of Georgetown University Medical Center, said in a prepared statement.

"But I must stress that this is a study in mice, and so we cannot say what anticancer effects, if any, Gingko biloba might offer humans," he added.

The findings appear in the January-February issue of Anticancer Research.

More information

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has more about Gingko biloba.

Strong Immune System May Protect Women From Loneliness-Linked lllness

March 1, 2006 04:01:12 PM PST

TUESDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- A stronger immune system may help explain why women are less likely to become ill in the face of isolation and loneliness than men, research in rats suggests.

This more robust immune response in females may be related to the demands of motherhood, the U.S. researchers speculated.

According to a team from the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin, female rats that were socially isolated for three months and then subjected to 30 minutes of acute physical stress had a "staggeringly stronger" inflammatory immune response than male rats subjected to the same conditions.

The 30 minutes of stress involved being placed in a restraint tube that simulated a collapsed burrow. About two weeks after that stressful experience, both the female and male rats were injected with a substance meant to challenge their inflammatory immune response, which responds to bacteria, viruses and parasites.

The female rats has a much faster healing response than male rats following the injections, the researchers said.

They believe the findings add to a growing body of knowledge about male/female health disparities and may help explain why socially isolated men are more vulnerable to disease and death than socially isolated women.

Inflammatory response is an important immune response involved in heart disease, infectious disease, cancer and other kinds of health problems.

The study appears in the February issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about stress and disease.