inhibits growth, induces cell death in prostate cancer cells but no effect on normal prostate cells

Diseases & Conditions Prostate Cancer
1
Please read the information in this thread skeptically. Some of it comes from discredited sources (researchers who have been forced to resign of for fabrication of data), and some of it is quite old by the standards of medical research such that it is unlikely that the authors, were they to write the studies today, would offer the same opinions.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't read the information -- it's an interesting discussion, I think -- but pay attention to the dates on things and bear in mind that in many cases subsequent research has produced surprises and a degree of controversy. I have tried to mark references to studies where one of the principal authors has since resigned under a cloud for fabricating data. The organization of which he was the head is quite large and has hundreds of researcher who work diligently and report their results honestly. It's tragic that their hard work is called into question by the involvement of one man, overeager for positive results, but there it is. Hopefully they can sort it out but they haven't yet. -- PeterDisAbelard

I admit I'm at least a little curious if this will cause a flame war this week. I do think its important enough to give it a try.

Note, I don’t sell or promote anything, I'm not even suggesting anyone take this. I just think it’s vitally important that this situation be monitored closely by prostate cancer patients. Until then a palm full of black walnuts won’t hurt anyone.

From Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314175659.htm
"This is the first demonstration of a unique mechanism of how vitamin E can have some benefit in terms of cancer prevention and treatment," said lead author Ching-Shih Chen, professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at The Ohio State University and an investigator in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Professor Chen was forced to resign for fabricating data in multiple studies.
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Chen cautioned that taking a typical vitamin E supplement won't offer this benefit for at least two reasons: === AKA the SELECT study
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This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

More from Rutgers…
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120423132015.htm
Scientists at the Center for Cancer Prevention Research, at Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, believe that two forms of vitamin E -- gamma and delta-tocopherols -- found in soybean, canola and corn oils as well as nuts do prevent colon, lung, breast and prostate cancers.

Yang says, it is important to distinguish between the different forms of vitamin E and conduct more research on its cancer preventive and other biological effects. == AKA the friggin SELECT study!!!!!!

Changing studies here.
Overall, the risk of prostate cancer decreased by 21% for every 25-mg/L increase in blood α-tocopherol level.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093044

The frustrating part is this goes back to this girl in 2004 with impeccable credentials. But no big clinical trials, why?
https://www.purdue.edu/hhs/nutr/directory/faculty/jiang_qing.html
We have recently showed that gamma-tocopherol, but not alpha-tocopherol, inhibits growth and induces cell death in prostate and lung cancer cells but has no effect on normal prostate epithelial cells. Our study demonstrates that gamma-tocopherol induce cell death by interrupting sphingolipid synthesis.

(Link deleted by Bubba)

more
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21400505
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15596715

(Link deleted by Bubba)

Post Edited By Moderator (PeterDisAbelard.) : 9/14/2018 9:54:46 AM (GMT-6)

2
yup, more stuff to ignore.
I'll be in the shop.
Age 58, 52 at DX
PSA:
4.2 10/11, 1.9 6/12, 1.2 12/12, 1.0 5/13, .6 11/13,
.7 5/14, .5 10/14, .5 4/15, .3 10/15, .3 4/16, .4 10/16, .4 5/17, .3 10/17 .3 4/18
G 3+4
Stage T1C
2 out of 14 cores positive
Treatment IGRT - 2/2012
3
Thats fine, read and ignore is perfectly ok.
Curious what part of this is of zero interest you -> induce cell death in human prostate cancer cells
4
Bubba,

I see no harm in including information like this on this forum. I love this kind of literature and have read most of it.
I am a clinical pharmacist that has taught this material to hundreds of pharmacy students.

My only question is.....how does this material help the men on this forum at this point. If, and that is one big if, any form of vitamin E is proven to have a major impact on prostate cancer, we will not know for many years. I would think you would not advocate men to take any form of vitamin E for their cancer based on the evidence you supplied.

The problems I have with supplements and vitamins are, the early literature looks very promising. When scrutinized, they usually have little impact on the disease they were intended to treat. Based on my training and experience, I wish I could tell you that I used great judgment with supplements. However, I have taken lycopene for prostate cancer, beta carotene for antioxidant benefit, selenium for prostate cancer, vitamin D for prostate cancer, pomegranate for prostate cancer, etc.

If I were advising you when you give this information, include a statement such as....this looks good but the data is still being generated and too soon to act upon.

Paul
Gleason 3+4; 5/16 positive cores; average volume 30%; PSA prior to tx 4.8
TX-IMRT + brachytherapy; IMRT Nov. 2011; Brachytherapy Feb. 2012
PSA April 2012--3.6
PSA May 2012--2.5
PSA Aug 2012--2.2
PSA Nov 2012--2.9
PSA Feb 2013--2.8
PSA May 2013--2.1
PSA Aug 2013--2.3
PSA Nov 2013--2.5
PSA May 2014--1.1
PSA Dec 2014--0.8
PSA Jun 2015--0.5
PSA Aug. 2016--0.4
PSA Mar. 2017--0.3
PSA Mar. 2018--0.15
5
Excellent points, however I think I covered each of them?

"My only question is.....how does this material help the men on this forum at this point."
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It doesn't, I said its a situation that needs to be monitored. The first link talks about a patent application so a study is coming but sadly may be several years away. One of the links talks about the natural form, which is preferred.
6
Keep posting bub, people can choose to read or not. If one does choose to ignore it, I don’t see how leaving a snarky response is helpful.
7
mattamx said...
Keep posting bub, people can choose to read or not. If one does choose to ignore it, I don’t see how leaving a snarky response is helpful.


Absolutely, Bubba! We are smart enough to figure out whether it is useful or even interesting info or not. And we can see when a study is a high quality human RCT or just some hypothesis generating preliminary work. In the mean time, I find such as this, at least some of it, something I'd like to be informed of. A post such as this should NEVER start a flame war, assuming all respondents, including those with differing opinions, remain respectful and friendly. And also assuming that the OP, when reading opinions that might disagree with him, remains respectful and friendly to the former when they present their differing opinions. Presented, of course, in a respectful and friendly way. And I hope and believe that applies to all of us.

And I sure do agree with you about "Until then a palm full of black walnuts won’t hurt anyone.".

Thanks for the links, I have already read a couple and find some of it of interest.
8
I just noticed this older RCT of 29,000 (!) men in Finland, this would have been before the infamous select trial. However, they were using the alpha form without including delta and gamma, which was already advised against by LEF by about that time, or at least advised against a long time before the select study. Any way, though this may have been contradicted by follow up studies, and even though it was the alpha ( plus the advised against -by some- beta carotene), I'll be darned if it was not good news for the Vitamin E intervention group! But interestingly, NOT in the B. carotene group, where it was somewhat worse. So this large intervention group had the opposite result from SELECT for alpha E, but I believe confirmed it for BC. I can't help but wonder what the results might have been with a more natural, mixed version of E,( or just lot's of walnuts!) since alpha is known to deplete Gamma( or is it delta?) Also interesting that good results were seen with clinical cases, but NOT in latent PC. I think that has also been the case in some vitamin D studies, if memory serves.

Why do I not know about this one? I know it was not confirmed by SELECT, but was it latter proven to be a fraud or something? That is always possible:



/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9521168/

Somebody said...

Format: Abstract

Send to
J Natl Cancer Inst. 1998 Mar 18;90(6):440-6.
Prostate cancer and supplementation with alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene: incidence and mortality in a controlled trial.
Heinonen OP1, Albanes D, Virtamo J, Taylor PR, Huttunen JK, Hartman AM, Haapakoski J, Malila N, Rautalahti M, Ripatti S, Mäenpää H, Teerenhovi L, Koss L, Virolainen M, Edwards BK.
Author information

1
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract
BACKGROUND:

Epidemiologic studies have suggested that vitamin E and beta-carotene may each influence the development of prostate cancer. In the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study, a controlled trial, we studied the effect of alpha-tocopherol (a form of vitamin E) and beta-carotene supplementation, separately or together, on prostate cancer in male smokers.
METHODS:

A total of 29133 male smokers aged 50-69 years from southwestern Finland were randomly assigned to receive alpha-tocopherol (50 mg), beta-carotene (20 mg), both agents, or placebo daily for 5-8 years (median, 6.1 years). The supplementation effects were estimated by a proportional hazards model, and two-sided P values were calculated.
RESULTS:

We found 246 new cases of and 62 deaths from prostate cancer during the follow-up period. A 32% decrease (95% confidence interval [CI] = -47% to -12%) in the incidence of prostate cancer was observed among the subjects receiving alpha-tocopherol (n = 14564) compared with those not receiving it (n = 14569). The reduction was evident in clinical prostate cancer but not in latent cancer. Mortality from prostate cancer was 41% lower (95% CI = -65% to -1%) among men receiving alpha-tocopherol. Among subjects receiving beta-carotene (n = 14560), prostate cancer incidence was 23% higher (95% CI = -4%-59%) and mortality was 15% higher (95% CI = -30%-89%) compared with those not receiving it (n = 14573). Neither agent had any effect on the time interval between diagnosis and death.
CONCLUSIONS:

Long-term supplementation with alpha-tocopherol substantially reduced prostate cancer incidence and mortality in male smokers. Other controlled trials are required to confirm the findings.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 9/12/2018 1:59:12 PM (GMT-6)

9
The Select study used synthetic vitamin E, which is not good and actually depletes the good forms. We've learned a thing or two about it since then.
This link is annoying but it gives some good info all in one place.

Later in this thread it was agreed that this link is not worth visiting.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/dl-alpha-tocopherol-acetate

Luckily we have a clinical pharmacist in the thread.
PDL17 any opinion on synthetic vitamin E?

Post Edited By Moderator (PeterDisAbelard.) : 9/13/2018 10:41:53 PM (GMT-6)

10
Green Med Info?
Biopsy right prostate: Benign tissue
Biopsy left prostate: Prostatic adencarcinoma, Gleason score 7 (4+3), 2 of 10 cores, 5% of total tissue sampled, Stage T1c, positive for PNI
66 Pd-103 seeds 3/13
PSAs: 4.76 5/12 - 4.23 8/12 - 3.98 10/12 - 4.9 2/13 - 2.9 6/13 - 2.7 11/13 - 1.31 3/14 - 1.07 7/14 - 0.69 10/14 - 1.6 3/15 - 2.0 6/15 - 0.64 8/15 - 0.68 4/16 - 0.16 11/16 - 0.12 6/17 - 0.12 6/18
11
Q Jiang has a new study coming out on the subject. Here's a link to the abstract:

Natural Forms of Vitamin E as Effective Agents for Cancer Prevention and Therapy.

The abstract starts: Initial research on vitamin E and cancer has focused on α-tocopherol (αT), but recent clinical studies on cancer-preventive effects of αT supplementation have shown disappointing results, which has led to doubts about the role of vitamin E, including different vitamin E forms, in cancer prevention. However, accumulating mechanistic and preclinical animal studies show that other forms of vitamin E, such as γ-tocopherol (γT), δ-tocopherol (δT), γ-tocotrienol (γTE), and δ-tocotrienol (δTE), have far superior cancer-preventive activities than does αT.

So, Bubba. Her review found very encouraging results with cell cultures in pitri dishes and a few mice. Some of the supplements in my daily fist-full-o-pills have similar support in research. I'm a sucker for mouse studies. But I'm not sure I would identify any of them as something that it is vitally important for prostate cancer patients to monitor. I mean, surely it doesn't take all of us to monitor the research on alternate forms of vitamin E. It's not a very fast changing body of evidence. I'm not sure I see the urgency.
65 Slow PSA rise 2007-2012: 1.4=>8
4 bxs 2010-2012: 1&2 neg, 3 pos 1/14 6(3+3) 3-4% (2nd opn. 7(3+4)), 4 neg
DaVinci 6/14/12. "some" nerve sparing on left
Path: pT3a pN0 R1 GS9(4+5) Pos margins on rt
24 mo ADT3 7/12 - 7/14
Adj IMRT 66.6 Gy 10/17/12-12/13/12
8/2012-3/2015: Incont., Trimix, VED, PSA<0.015.
AUS & IPP installed 3/5/2015
Forum Moderator - Not a medical professional
12
BillyBob,

I hate, hate, hate Black Walnuts. Nasty bitter things. Never could stand them. Still can't.
65 Slow PSA rise 2007-2012: 1.4=>8
4 bxs 2010-2012: 1&2 neg, 3 pos 1/14 6(3+3) 3-4% (2nd opn. 7(3+4)), 4 neg
DaVinci 6/14/12. "some" nerve sparing on left
Path: pT3a pN0 R1 GS9(4+5) Pos margins on rt
24 mo ADT3 7/12 - 7/14
Adj IMRT 66.6 Gy 10/17/12-12/13/12
8/2012-3/2015: Incont., Trimix, VED, PSA<0.015.
AUS & IPP installed 3/5/2015
Forum Moderator - Not a medical professional
13
Bubbatc said...
The Select study used synthetic vitamin E, which is not good and actually depletes the good forms. We've learned a thing or two about it since then...................


Right. but I wonder what they used in that Finland study that showed very good results? I mean, other than alpha? Natural or synthetic? I do not know, but results were good. Maybe could have been better with natural and some gamma/delta mixed in.
14
PeterDisAbelard. said...
BillyBob,

I hate, hate, hate Black Walnuts. Nasty bitter things. Never could stand them. Still can't.


So what are we going to do with you? You might just have to take a pill. Sounds like you already do, maybe more than 1 pill.
15
BillyBob said...
Right. but I wonder what they used in that Finland study that showed very good results?


Nicotine?

They were all smokers.
65 Slow PSA rise 2007-2012: 1.4=>8
4 bxs 2010-2012: 1&2 neg, 3 pos 1/14 6(3+3) 3-4% (2nd opn. 7(3+4)), 4 neg
DaVinci 6/14/12. "some" nerve sparing on left
Path: pT3a pN0 R1 GS9(4+5) Pos margins on rt
24 mo ADT3 7/12 - 7/14
Adj IMRT 66.6 Gy 10/17/12-12/13/12
8/2012-3/2015: Incont., Trimix, VED, PSA<0.015.
AUS & IPP installed 3/5/2015
Forum Moderator - Not a medical professional
16
I spent a November in Finland once. If you can survive a winter, you are stronger than I am!
17
142 said...
I spent a November in Finland once. If you can survive a winter, you are stronger than I am!


Maybe they are just so toughened by those winters that the vitamin E(even Alpha) was unable to make their PC worse, like the SELECT trial? Or, as PDA says, maybe the nicotine, plus maybe combined with the winters, killed their PC?

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 9/12/2018 9:08:52 PM (GMT-6)

18
Peter,
From your link you dont think these statement are worth monitoring? Did I say ALL of us?

"These vitamin E forms, but not αT, cause pro-death or antiproliferation effects in cancer cells via modulating various signaling pathways, including sphingolipid metabolism. "
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"The existing evidence strongly indicates that these lesser-known vitamin E forms are effective agents for cancer prevention or as adjuvants for improving prevention, therapy, and control of cancer."

These and many others talk more specifically about the prostate
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314175659.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120423132015.htm

Can we agree that the select study is NOT gospel?
19
Green Med Info?

oops yes sorry, I was leaving work and tried to find something quick.
I never heard of them and they seem kinda shady. Can we strike that one from the record?
20
Candidly, Bubba,

I don't care much about the SELECT study.

Nor do I care much about your encouraging mouse studies from several years ago. There are soooo many things that kill cancer cells in a petri dish or extend the survival of xenograft mice. They have a dismaying habit of not proving out in human trials.

Your title for this thread doesn't mention vitamin E, natural or otherwise, or mice. Instead you lead with "inhibits growth, induces cell death in prostate cancer cells but no effect on normal prostate cells" and yeah, one of your researchers might have said that but they were talking about mouse studies, or in vitro. You seem to want to make natural vitamin E sound like a cure for cancer. That's possible, I suppose, it might turn out to be such but I sort of doubt it and it would be years away.

I don't mind your posting your studies, or your article from a company that sells supplements*, but I don't share your excitement about them.

*I use some of their supplements, by the way. They're a little pricey but when you want a particular form of something (like your natural vitamin E, for instance, which I don't take) they are often one of the few places to get it.
65 Slow PSA rise 2007-2012: 1.4=>8
4 bxs 2010-2012: 1&2 neg, 3 pos 1/14 6(3+3) 3-4% (2nd opn. 7(3+4)), 4 neg
DaVinci 6/14/12. "some" nerve sparing on left
Path: pT3a pN0 R1 GS9(4+5) Pos margins on rt
24 mo ADT3 7/12 - 7/14
Adj IMRT 66.6 Gy 10/17/12-12/13/12
8/2012-3/2015: Incont., Trimix, VED, PSA<0.015.
AUS & IPP installed 3/5/2015
Forum Moderator - Not a medical professional