Tomatoes and cancer

Prostate cancer patients are being treated with lycopene that gives tomatoes their red colour.

Prostate cancer patients are being treated with an artificial version of the pigment lycopene that gives tomatoes their red colour, after a Dutch study found that low doses of lycopene suppressed the growth of human prostate tumours.

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According to the Daily Mail, the product being used is a lycopene supplement called LycoVit.

Moreover, combining lycopene with vitamin E reduced tumour growth even further, by as much as 73 per cent after a trial study of 42 days.

The mouse study compared low or high doses of synthetic lycopene with vitamin E on its own or in combination.

"What was particularly marked was that it was the low dose of both lycopene and vitamin E that was the most effective, demonstrating that 'more does not necessarily equal better," said Dr Jacqueline Limpens, from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, who presented the findings at a cancer symposium in Geneva.

"Many pharmacological agents and natural compounds follow a bell-shaped dose response curve, which means that very low or high doses may not work and that there is an optimal dose between the two extremes," he added.

Limpens, however, said that further research is needed before knowing whether lycopene and vitamin E could be safely used to prevent prostate cancer in healthy men.