TOUTED as a means of cancer prevention, green tea capsules may have the opposite effect on people taking certain anti-cancer drugs.
A team led by Axel Schönthal of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles gave mice with human multiple myeloma tumours the drug bortezomib (Velcade) or ECGC, an antioxidant found in green tea, or both together (Blood, DOI: 10.1182/blood-2008-07-171389). While bortezomib alone shrank the tumours, the mixture did not.
Test-tube studies showed that the drug was inactivated by ECGC levels similar to those in a person who regularly takes capsules of green tea extract. These are…
