Cranberries could be key to combating bowel cancer, according to a study offering new hope to sufferers of a disease that kills almost 16,200 people in the UK each year.
Researchers generated three powdered cranberry extracts – a whole fruit powder, another containing only chemicals from the cranberry known as polyphenols, and a third with only the non-polyphenol components of the fruit.
The extracts, equivalent to a cup of cranberries a day, were mixed into the meals of mice with colon cancer.
After 20 weeks the mice given the whole cranberry extract had about half the number of tumours as mice that received no cranberry in their food. The remaining tumours in the cranberry-fed mice were also smaller.
Furthermore, the cranberry extracts appeared to reduce the levels of inflammation markers in the mice.
Researchers said the same benefits could not necessarily be drawn from cranberry juice which lacks some components in the skin. They hope to find out which individual components in the cranberry are responsible for its anti-cancer properties.
Previous research has found that chemicals derived from cranberry extracts could selectively kill off colon tumour cells in laboratory dishes.
Some evidence also suggests that polyphenols have anti-inflammatory properties, and the researchers wanted to assess their contribution to the cranberry's overall impact.
