Researchers in Japan and Baltimore have found that a daily serving of broccoli sprouts can improve chronic bacterial gastritis, a serious disorder that causes inflammation of the stomach lining.
Without treatment, gastritis may lead to ulcers and in some cases, to stomach cancer.

Unlike the green, treelike florets common on dinner plates, three-day-old sprouts from broccoli seeds contain ultra high concentrations of sulforaphane, a compound with documented cancer prevention effects.

Hopkins investigators say there is some evidence the compound has antibiotic properties to treat the bacteria that causes gastritis.

Forty participants in Japan were randomly assigned to eat 100 grams daily of either broccoli sprouts or a sulforaphane-free vegetable.
Researchers measured levels of blood proteins that are specific indicators of gastritis and inflammation, and they measured participants' stomach colonization with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
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" The indicators of bacterial infection and gastritis were significantly reduced in the group that ate broccoli sprouts," says Jed Fahey, at Johns Hopkins, who recently discovered that sulforaphane had potent antibiotic activity against H. pylori in test tubes.

When broccoli-sprout eaters stopped their daily dose at the end of the study, gastritis and infection rates rose to pretreatment levels.

" H. pylori infection is especially prevalent in places with crowded living conditions and poor sanitation where it causes high rates of stomach cancers and other gastric disorders," says Fahey, who participated in the current study with Akinori Yanaka, at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. " In many developing regions with limited health care resources, an effective dietary change may be much more practical than prescribing a drug to reduce rates of certain illnesses."

The researchers will conduct longer-term studies to determine whether broccoli sprouts can prevent stomach cancer in people at risk for the disease.

In another sulforaphane study in mice, Johns Hopkins researchers say that applying broccoli-sprout extract to the skin may prevent skin cancers caused by the sun.

The scientists simulated the kind of skin damage that a person might sustain from the sun by exposing mice to UV light twice a week over 20 weeks. Then, each day ( five days/week ) they applied a few drops of an extract of broccoli sprouts on the backs of the mice and waited for tumors to appear. After 11 weeks, all of the mice that did not receive the extract developed tumors. At that point, only half of the mice receiving the extract had skin tumors.

" We believe sulforaphane, the cancer-preventive compound in broccoli sprouts, increases the levels of a variety of enzymes in the body that protect against cancer," says Albena Dinkova-Kostova, at Johns Hopkins. " Sulforaphane can also decrease inflammation and eliminate harmful types of oxygen molecules and damaged cells."

The Hopkins researchers will conduct more tests in mice to determine whether broccoli sprout extracts can prevent skin cancer before sun damage occurs. They also hope to test the extract on organ transplant patients, who are at high risk for skin cancers.

Source: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, 2005


XagenaMedicine2005