Bananas prevent Kidney Cancer

February 3, 2005: Source: Nutraingredients and 20 January issue of the International Journal of Cancer (vol 113, issue 3, pp451-5).

Salads and banana feeding protection against getting kidney cancer. People who regularly salad, root vegetables such as carrots and fruits especially bananas and eat 40% less chance of getting kidney cancer compared to those who do not regularly eat raw vegetables and bananas, as a large epidemologische Swedish study among over 61,000 women aged 40 to 63 years with a duration of 13 years. The banana is the substance potassium in Pubmed searches and who sees that potassium has a preventive effect of getting cancer and in this case getting kidney cancer. Successively abstract of study Int J Cancer. 2005 Jan 20; 113 (3) :451-5, and article on this study Nutraingredients

Int J Cancer. 2005 Jan 20; 113 (3) :451-5.

Fruits, vegetables and risk of renal cell carcinoma: a prospective study of Swedish women.

Rashidkhani B, Lindblad P, Wolk A.

Division of Nutritional Epidemiology, The National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Bahram.Rashidkhani @ imm.ki.se

Epidemiologic studies of findings on the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and renal cell carcinoma (RCC) risk have been Inconclusive. To study the association between fruits and vegetables and risk of RCC in a population-based prospective cohort study of Swedish women, we collected dietary information from 61.000 women age 40-76 years by a food-frequency questionnaire. During 13.4 years of follow-up 122 women developed RCC. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Women consuming 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily had a relative risk of 0.59 (95% CI = 0.26-1.34) in comparison to them consuming less than once daily.

When fruits and vegetables were Examined separately, those who consumed more than 75 servings per month or fruits or vegetables had multivariate relative risk of 0.59 (95% CI = 0.27-1.25) and 0.60 (95% CI = 0.31-1.17) respectively, compared to those consuming 11 servings per month or less. Within the group of fruits, the strongest inverse association was observed for banana (p = 0.07 by Wald test). The risk of RCC increased monotonically with increasing intake frequencies of fruit juice (p-value for trend = 0.10).
Within the group of vegetables, the strongest inverse association was observed for root vegetables (p = 0.03 by Wald test). The risk of RCC decreased with increasing consumption frequencies of white cabbage (p for trend = 0.07).
Frequent consumption of salad vegetables (once or more per day) decreased the risk by 40% (RR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.30-1.22), in comparison to no consumption. Our results suggested that high consumption of fruits and vegetables might be associated with reduced risk of RCC.

PMID: 15455348 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

24/01/2005 - Women keen on bananas, salads and root vegetables may be less likely to develop kidney cancer, suggests a new Swedish study.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden analysed dietary information from 61.000 women aged 40-76 and followed the group for 13 years. They found that those who consumed five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily reduced their relative risk of developing renal cell carcinoma -- the most common form of kidney cancer - although these results were not statistically significant.

However certain fruits and vegetables - namely bananas, root vegetables, white cabbage and salad veg - appeared to offer strong protection, the authors report in the January 20 issue of the International Journal of Cancer (vol 113, issue 3, pp451-5).
Eating salads more than once a day decreased the risk by 40 per cent in comparison to no consumption, while women who ate bananas four to six times a week had about half the risk of kidney cancer as those who did not eat the fruit. Bananas are rich in potassium, the anti-carcinogenic potential of which has been speculated upon by epidemiologists.
Regular consumption of root vegetables like carrots was linked to a 50 to 65 per cent decrease in risk. The number of people being diagnosed with kidney cancer has increased sharply over the past 20 years. Almost 6.000 people in the UK are told they have the disease each year. However, rates are much higher in western countries than they are in developing countries leading scientists to suspect that lifestyle factors, such as smoking and obesity, play an important role. There been some previous evidence to show that regularly eating fruits and vegetables may protect against kidney cancer but the data has not been consistent.The new study is the largest to show an association between kidney cancer and fruit and vegetable intake, according to lead author Dr. Bahram Rashidkhani.