Kombucha prepared from ginger holds potential for treating breast cancer

A study published in the Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine reported that kombucha with ginger (Zingiber officinale) may help treat breast cancer. The authors observed the effect of the fermented tea on a murine breast cancer animal model.

• Abnormal metabolism is a hallmark in cancerous cells. To illustrate, the increase of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, specifically because of aerobic respiration at the invasive stage, triggers cancer progression.
• For the study, researchers examined the effects of kombucha tea made from ginger to antioxidant agents in the breast cancer animal model.
•  The authors administered two types of kombucha tea, one with and one without ginger, to BALB/c mice before and after tumor challenge.
• The researchers assessed superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (two common enzymes), the antioxidant glutathione (GSH), and malondialdehyde (MDA) (a marker for oxidative stress) in the subjects’ tumor, liver, and kidney.
• The test results revealed that the kombucha ginger tea significantly decreased catalase activity, along with GSH and MDA levels, in tumor homogenate in the murine breast cancer model.
• The study findings also showed a notable decrease in SOD activity and an increase in MDA quantity in the kidney of subjects that received the kombucha ginger tea.

The research team concluded that consuming kombucha prepared from ginger may have minor antioxidant impacts by balancing multi-antioxidant factors in different tissues in the murine breast cancer models.

You can read more articles about study findings on natural cancer treatments at Cancer.news.

Journal Reference: 

Salafzoon S, Hosseini HM, Halabian R. EVALUATION OF THE ANTIOXIDANT IMPACT OF GINGER-BASED KOMBUCHA ON THE MURINE BREAST CANCER MODEL. Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine. 2017;15(1). DOI: 10.1515/jcim-2017-0071