OLIVE OIL HELPS COMBAT BREAST CANCEROlive oil appears to be an excellent adjunct to the diets of breast cancer sufferers because it improves the efficacy of chemotherapy and impedes the formation of antibodies that resist pharmaceutical therapies euroeuro thus the prospects opened up by experiments conducted by Dr. Javier Menendez of Northwestern University euros Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The results, published in Annals of Oncology, demonstrate that olive oil fats lower by forty-six per cent the presence of the principal mammalian carcinogen and stimulate the effectiveness of a drug aimed specifically at this great foe. This would explain the conspicuously lower breast cancer rate among women of the Mediterranean basin, a statistic often confirmed by in-depth studies.Dr. Menendezeuros team are the first to understand the underlying dietary biochemistry and will now launch new projects to determine whether breast cancer victims who ingest adequate quantities of Extra-Virgin olive oil will respond better to treatment. If this should prove to be the case, basic molecules of such oils may be introduced into the therapies as coadjuvants.The researchers had set out to explain the lower incidence of breast cancer in southern Europe, and to this end studied the effects of oleic acid, the main molecule of Extra-Virgin oil, on laboratory cultures of cancer cells. They observed that the activity of Gene Her-2/neu, a particularly ferocious carcinogen hyperactively present in one of five breast tumours, was reduced by forty-six per cent. Moreover, oleic acid was shown to interact with and stimulate the activity of Herceptin, a pharmaceutical that blocks the pathogenic protein emitted by Her-2/neu. And if that wereneurot enough, it could also be shown that Extra-Virgin olive oileuros oleic acid notably stimulates the production of protein p27Kip1, a genetic anti-carcinogen in the patient that also impedes resistance to Herceptine.In short, it appears that Extra-Virgin olive oil advances the health of women in several ways and on several fronts. Now this conclusion must be proved by exhaustive studies of the every-day diets of many women both healthy and ill, one critical question being whether withdrawal of the oil from the diet will increase resistance to Herceptin. Dr. Menendezeuros long-run goal is to develop oleic acid as an effective essential in breast cancer therapies. menu