Green Tea and Child Cancer

It is always interesting to see the claims made by researchers into the benefits of drinking green tea. After all, the Chinese have been saying that it is good for your health for thousands of years. Most of the tests though are carried out on cell smaples that are outside of the body or on other animals so they are certainly in their infancy. Others, tried on humans, are so difficult to control that they are empirical at best. At worst, they are completely subjective.

However, with test after test coming up with green tea versus this, green tea versus that and so on, surely there has to be something in it. A recent study in Australia has found that a modified catechin (catechin is one of the antioxidants found in green tea) from green tea extract has been shown to kill 50% of the cells from neuroblastoma cancers, a particularly nasty cancer that strikes at infants. The problem is that the unmodified catechin is unstable in the human body and that limits its practical effectiveness. A modified version that is more stable is the one found to kill the cancer cells; cells that are normally highly resistant to chemotherapy. The research team have been awarded a further research grant to take the study further.