Cancer prevention by dietary constituents in toxicological perspective
article
Diet contains a multitude of chemopreventive compounds. There are various ways of detecting the (anti)genotoxic potential of individual compounds or of whole foods ranging from short-term genotoxicity assays in vitro to epidemiological studies. There is a parallel between health risk assessment for non-carcinogens and for nongenotoxic carcinogens and health benefit effect assessment for chemopreventive agents: both imply a threshold for their effects. Toxicology indicates the lines of evidence necessary to establish a true antigenotoxic or anticarcinogenic effect in humans. One should consider four caveats: (1) an antigenotoxic potential in vitro should be verified by in vivo studies; (2) there is a lowest effect dose (threshold) below which no effect will occur; (3) beware that toxicity does not outweigh beneficial effects; and (4) (anti)carcinogens are not always (anti)mutagens and vice versa. Despite these caveats chemopreventive effects as a result of dietary intake do occur in humans. Both epidemiological evidence and evidence from experimental studies in humans is being accumulated rapidly.
Topics
TNO Identifier
233773
ISSN
07318898
Source
Journal of Environmental Pathology, Toxicology and Oncology, 16(4), pp. 343-360.
Pages
343-360
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