Garlic Packs Cancer-Fighting Punch

COLUMBUS, OhioGarlic may play a role in inhibiting the conversion of some substances found in foods or contaminated water into carcinogens, according Ohio State University researchers who designed a urine test that simultaneously measures the extent of a potential carcinogenic process and a marker of garlic consumption in humans.

In a small pilot study, the test suggested that the more garlic people consumed, the lower the levels of the potential carcinogenic process were. Researchers studied body processes associated with nitrogen-containing compounds.

What we were after was developing a method where we could measure in urine two different compounds, one related to the risk for cancer, and the other, which indicates the extent of consumption of garlic. Our results showed that those were inversely related to one anothermeaning that the more we had the marker for garlic consumption, the less there was of the marker for the risk of cancer, wrote the senior author.