An extract made from the leaves of olive trees appears capable of putting the brakes on mesothelioma.
In a recent Italian study, the extract was shown to have an effect against mesothelioma cells. The extract appeared to inhibit their growth and spread.
The researchers who made the extract also came away convinced that it could even help prevent mesothelioma from ever getting started.
It is important to note that the extract is not olive oil. Olive oil comes from the fruit of the olive tree. The extract the researchers produced comes from the leaves of the olive tree.
So adding olive oil to your diet isn’t going to help in the same way that the olive leaf extract potentially could. It will be some time yet before the researchers perfect olive leaf extract and figure out exactly how to use it against mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma Cells Lost Viability
The olive leaf extract produced by the researchers was prepared in a way that made it exceptionally rich in oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol.
They started with leaves taken from trees growing near the town of Imperia, Italy, and dried for seven days. The leaves were then chopped into bits no larger than 1 mm.
The bits were scooped up and placed into an extract-making machine the researchers had built. The machine then processed the bits into an extract consisting of at least 60 percent oleuropein.
At this point, the researchers were able to begin studying the effect of the extract on mesothelioma cells. In particular, they wanted to see what the extract would do to intracellular calcium2+ mobilization.
According to the researchers, what the extract did was disrupt that mobilization. In doing so, the mesothelioma cells were prevented from proliferating. The cells were also rendered less viable.
The researchers theorized that this disruption of intracellular calcium2+ mobilization and accompanying loss of cell viability was the result of the oleuropein acting through its hydroxytyrosol moiety.
Potential Anti-Mesothelioma Therapeutic
Certain of the therapeutic properties of oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol have been known for centuries. They were particularly well-known to practitioners of folk medicine in Italy and other countries along the rim of the Mediterranean Sea.
And formal scientific studies of oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol have been conducted before by other researchers, just not on mesothelioma.
The work of those earlier researchers noted the potential of oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol to act as a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory therapeutic.
Those findings led to speculation that oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol could slow or stop the spread of cancer, since cancer — mesothelioma included — can start due to oxidation and inflammation processes.
In this most recent study, the researchers were from Italy’s Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Universit`a del Piemonte Orientale and Universit Adegli Studidi.
The title of their study is “Oleuropein-Enriched Olive Leaf Extract Affects Calcium Dynamics and Impairs Viability of Malignant Mesothelioma Cells.”
