Papaya in research study

[clair2305]

Hiya

At the weekend my mother in-law gave me a newspaper cutting about papayas being effective against cancers that included pancreas and liver.

I've look on the net this morning and found the article from the University of Florida's Shands Cancer Centre and am now posting the links below:-

http://www.ufscc.ufl.edu/Patient/content.aspx?section=ufscc&specialnews=true&id=44724

http://www.news.health.ufl.edu/news/story.aspx?ID=5525

http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8482

I am about the email Elizabeth Connor, who is the contact regarding this trial.

I will let you know if I get a response.

Clair

[clair2305]

Dear All

I have had a reply from Dr Dang and it is below:-

"Regarding preparation of the teas- In the clinical anecdotes that I have seen/heard and in our preparation of the leaves for our research, we take the following steps:

the leaves are taken from the papaya trees and then dried in the sun. We then boil water in clay pots (the clinical anecdotes often indicate that no metal should touch the product, so we take the leaves down by hand- no knife-, and we use clay pots to boil the water- no aluminum-, and the tea is stored in plastic bottles. Scientifically, I am not yet certain if metals will affect the activity, but I felt it is "safer" to follow the clinical anecdotes). After the water is boiled, then we put in the dried leaves and drink the tea extract. Typically, the tea is made quite concentrated, and extract from one leaf can be consumed in one or two days. They usually drink the tea once or twice a day. Patients have typically consumed these extracts in months/years with no observed side effects. I have no data on the specific type of papaya plants, although anecdotally, I have heard of successful treatments in Vietnam, Japan and Australia, so perhaps the efficacy is found in papaya leaves from many countries……

Anecdotally, there are patients with many types of cancer who use the tea extract after failing standard chemo. Of course, as you are very well aware, our work is still relatively preliminary and much remains to be done to fully understand any potential effect of the tea leaf extract on cancer.

The one important issue that we still don't know (there is simply no data) is whether there is any interaction (positively or negatively) between papaya leaf extract and standard chemo. At this time, there is no data regarding potential interactions.

I have not personally look into this, but perhaps some general heatlh stores also sell papaya tea extract? Since I am not sure how these extracts are made (the ones sold in general health stores), it is not possible for me to say whether they would be the same as the ones made from the leaves from the clinical anecdotes

I hope the above is helpful and once again , wish you the very best."

Now I am going to respond again, but need to think about my reply, don't want to bombard him.....any tips/questions please?

Clair