Garlic oil has been found to reduce adverse effects of chemo and radiotherapy in animal study.
![Garlic Oil May Reduce Adverse Effects of Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy Garlic Oil May Reduce Adverse Effects of Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy](https://images.medindia.net/health-images/1200_1000/garlic-oil.jpg)
With the incidence of cancer cases rising globally, it has become imperative to find natural ways to reduce the adverse effects of the two major methods for cancer treatment, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Anticancer effects of garlic and its products have already been demonstrated by various studies but not much information is available on whether garlic benefits people undergoing chemo/ radiotherapy.
So, researchers at School of Public Health, Shandong University, China, set out to investigate the effects of garlic oil on the adverse effects of chemo/radiotherapy in mice with cancerous tumors.
In the chemotherapy test, the tumor-bearing mice were treated with cyclophosphamide (CTX) or CTX plus garlic oil for 14 days, while the mice received a single 5 Gy radiation or radiation plus garlic oil in radiotherapy test.
The findings showed that garlic oil did not enhance the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but they did have the following positive results with garlic oil co-treatment –
• Added garlic oil treatment significantly inhibited the decrease of the DNA contents and the micronuclei ratio of the bone marrow. Micronuclei are small nuclei in the DNA that are essential for reproduction.
The findings thus support the idea that garlic oil does help reduce the adverse effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
However, further research is needed to find out if garlic oil could reduce the adverse effects induced by other chemotherapeutic drugs.
Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23772706
Source-Medindia