In a poster presentation at the 2011 American Institute of Cancer Research conference, researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center offered the results of a very small study that suggested a possible protective effect of the antioxidant compound lycopene during radiation treatment.
The research involved just 17 patients, all of whom underwent radiation therapy of varying lengths for the treatment of prostate cancer. Every day during treatment, 12 of those patients consumed between 4 and 12 ounces of tomato juice, which is known to contain lycopene.
At the end of their treatments, patients were tested for several markers for inflammation in the blood, and the 12 who drank tomato juice had decreased levels of a number of these markers compared to the 5 patients who did not drink tomato juice, markers including interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein.
These findings have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and they would require replication in a larger study, but they do support the anti-inflammatory benefits of tomato juice, and researchers stressed that these effects are likely "synergistic" and not likely to be experienced simply through taking a lycopene supplement.
Source: 2011 AICR Highlights
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