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People Taking This Supplement 50% Less Likely To Get Hereditary Cancers – Says New Research

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After quitting the supplement, the impact lasted 10 years.

A study involving individuals with a high hereditary risk of a variety of cancers revealed that resistant starch, which is found in a variety of foods including oats, breakfast cereal, cooked and cooled pasta or rice, peas and beans, and slightly green bananas, has a significant cancer-preventive effect.

An international trial known as CAPP2 involving nearly one thousand patients with Lynch syndrome from around the world demonstrated that a regular dose of resistant starch, also known as fermentable fibre, taken for an average of two years had no effect on cancers of the bowel but reduced cancers in other parts of the body by more than fifty percent.

This effect was more significant for cancers of the upper gastrointestinal system, such as those of the oesophagus, stomach, biliary tract, pancreas, and duodenum.

The remarkable benefit was observed to persist for 10 years after supplementation was discontinued.

The report, which was led by researchers at the Universities of Newcastle and Leeds and released today in Cancer Prevention Research, is a planned double-blind follow-up for 10 years, with data from the national cancer registry for up to 20 years for 369 of the participants.

Previous research from the same trial showed that aspirin cut the risk of cancer of the large intestine by 50%.

“We found that resistant starch reduces a range of cancers by over 60%. The effect was most obvious in the upper part of the gut,” says Professor John Mathers. “This is important as cancers of the upper GI tract are difficult to diagnose and often are not caught early on.

Peas, beans, oats, and other starchy foods naturally contain resistant starch, which can be taken as a powder supplement. 

“The dose used in the trial is equivalent to eating a daily banana; before they become too ripe and soft, the starch in bananas resists breakdown and reaches the bowel where it can change the type of bacteria that live there.

You can’t digest a carbohydrate called resistant starch, so it goes to work in your big intestine and feeds your good bacteria. It’s kind of like dietary fiber.  This kind of starch is lower in calories than regular starch and has a number of health advantages. By altering the bacterial metabolism of bile acids and reducing the kinds of bile acids that might damage our DNA and ultimately result in cancer, resistant starch may be able to prevent the development of cancer. 

“However, this needs further research,” add the authors.

“When we started the studies over 20 years ago,” adds Professor Sir John Burn, “we thought that people with a genetic predisposition to colon cancer could help us to test whether we could reduce the risk of cancer with either aspirin or resistant starch,”

Finding that aspirin can cut the risk of large bowel cancer and other cancers by half is crucially significant since patients with Lynch syndrome are at high risk because they are more likely to acquire cancers.

“Based on our trial, NICE now recommend Aspirin for people at high genetic risk of cancer, the benefits are clear – aspirin and resistant starch work.”

Long-term research

Between 1999 and 2005, almost 1000 individuals started taking either aspirin, a placebo, or resistant starch in powder form twice daily for two years.

There was no overall difference between those who had taken aspirin or resistant starch and those who hadn’t at the end of the treatment phase. However, the study was planned for further follow-up since the research team expected a longer-term effect.

Only 5 new occurrences of upper GI cancers were reported throughout the follow-up period among the 463 people who had taken the resistant starch, compared to 21 among the 455 who had received the placebo.

The team is now in charge of the international trial CaPP3, in which more than 1,800 people with Lynch syndrome have signed up to see if smaller, safer doses of aspirin can help lower the risk of cancer.

Cancer Research UK, the European Commission, the Medical Research Council, and the National Institute of Health Research sponsor the research.

Image Credit: Getty

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