Walnuts May Ward Off Prostate Cancer

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (Texas, USA) report that consuming two ounces of walnuts a day may protect against prostate cancer.  Russel Reiter and colleagues completed a study in which the researchers injected immune-deficient mice with human prostate cancer cells. Within three to four weeks, tumors typically start to grow in a large number of these mice. Some of the mice were fed a typical diet used in animal studies, to which was added a small amount of walnuts (equivalent to a human eating about 2 ounces, or two handfuls, a day).  Whereas 3 of 16 mice (18%) eating the walnut-enriched diet developed prostate tumors, 14 of 32 mice (44%) fed the non-walnut control diet developed tumors. Notably, the final average tumor size in the walnut-fed animals was roughly one-fourth the average size of the prostate tumors that developed in the mice eating the control diet.