OTTAWA — Curries not only make skin sweat, they may protect against skin cancer, according to the latest study on the anti-cancer prowess of turmeric.

Published today in the journal Cancer, the study found curcumin, the pigment that gives turmeric its yellow tint, keeps the deadliest skin cancers from dividing and growing and stimulates apoptosis — an intracellular death program that causes cancer cells to kill themselves.

The finding hasn’t been tested in animals, let alone people, but it is the latest to suggest the centuries old and “dirt cheap” Indian folk medicine may help treat and prevent cancer, researchers say.

Curcumin is already being tested on patients with multiple myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer, as well as pancreatic cancer. Researchers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston also hope to test the compound on breast cancer patients after last month reporting that curcumin stopped breast tumour cells from spreading to the lungs in mice injected with human breast cancer cells.

University of California, Los Angeles researchers reported in January that curcumin destroyed the sticky brain plaques linked with Alzheimer’s disease in mice. Others are testing it on diseases as diverse as cystic fibrosis, alcohol-related liver disease and inflammatory bowel disease.

“We are taking one tumour at a time and reporting the effects of curcumin,” says Bharat Aggarwal, of the department of experimental therapeutics at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and a co-author of the study. He’s also co-founder of Curry Pharmaceuticals, a North Carolina company whose mission is to develop a synthetic curcumin for “multiple pharmacological pathways.”

The native of India — who himself pops 500 milligrams of curcumin supplements per day — says populations with curcumin-rich diets have dramatically lower rates of breast, prostate, lung, colon and other cancers.

The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of turmeric — a herb native to southern and southeastern Asia that belongs to the ginger family — have been known for ages.

Traditional Indian medicine has used turmeric powder for everything from coughs and sore throats to diabetic ulcers, sprains and rheumatism.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005