Cancer Prevention by Dietary Constituents in toxicological perspective.
Year: 1997
Type: other
Abstract: Diet contains a multitude of chemopreventive compounds. There are various ways of detecting the (anti)genotoxic potential of individual compounds or of whole foods ranging from short-term genotoxicity assays in vitro to epidemiological studies. There is a parallel between health risk assessment for non-carcinogens and for nongenotoxic carcinogens and health benefit effect assessment for chemopreventive agents: both imply a threshold for their effects. Toxicology indicates the lines of evidence necessary to establish a true antigenotoxic or anticarcinogenic effect in humans. One should consider four caveats: (1) an antigenotoxic potential in vitro should be verified by in vivo studies; (2) there is a lowest effect dose (threshold) below which no effect will occur; (3) beware that toxicity does not outweigh beneficial effects; and (4) (anti)carcinogens are not always (anti)mutagens and vice versa. Despite these caveats chemopreventive effects as a result of dietary intake do occur in humans. Both epidemiological evidence and evidence from experimental studies in humans is being accumulated rapidly.
Authors: Hans Verhagen, C.J.M. Rompelberg, M. M. Strube, G. van Poppel, Peter J. van Bladeren
Language: English
Subfield: Cancer Research
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1489591878