The Journal: Cancer Research

The Study: Hot peppers may one day be used to induce prostate cancer to commit a sort of cellular suicide—but don't reach for the Jalapenos just yet. Unless you know what you're doing, they may actually mask important signs of the disease.

What gives peppers their fire is capsaicin, a chemical found in higher or lower concentrations depending on the particular pepper plant. Capsaicin has often been studied for its possible medicinal properties and recently researchers from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and UCLA fed the chemical to mice with prostate malignancies to see if the chemical would have any effect on the disease. And have an effect it did: following the treatment, 80% of the cancerous cells began to undergo apoptosis—lab-speak for programmed cell death. That's not all the cells, of course, and with cancer 100% eradication is always the goal. Still, the results were encouraging. Sort of.

What it Means: Any treatment that works in mice is still a long way from working in humans. But that said, the capsaicin did seem to deal the cells an impressive double-punch. First, it interfered  with a molecular system that can block the normal cell-death process. Clear those pathways and the cancer cells can't survive. Capsaicin also reduced the number of androgen receptors on the cells' surface. Since some prostate cancer cells require androgens to grow, preventing the cells from absorbing the hormone can contain the disease.

But there are a couple of things of things that make these otherwise promising findings exceedingly preliminary. For one thing, capsaicin can reduce the production of prostate specific antigen, or PSA, a protein released by prostate cancer cells that doctors look for in diagnosing the disease. Block the PSA and the cancer could go undetetected until it's too late. For another thing, the amount of capsaicin given to the unlucky mice was the equivalent of giving a 200-lb. man 400 mg of the stuff three times a week. That's the equivalent of eating between three and eight fresh Habanera peppers—not something you'd ever want to do. A single Habanero may contain up to 300,000 Scoville units, the standard measure for pepper heat. The common Jalapeno—which is plenty fiery for many people—contains no more than 5,000.

From the Archives:
10/04/04 Prostate Priorities
01/07/04 Prostate Debate