Research shows green tea can help cancer patients

Posted on October 26, 2018
Research shows green tea can counteract some of the side effects of the cancer-fighting drug Cisplatin. (eyemage/flickr)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Asking a cancer patient to trade their hearing for being cancer-free would be a toughie. But hearing loss, among other things, is a side effect of a popular cancer drug.

The drug is Cisplatin. The antidote might be green tea.

Pharmacology professor Vikram Ramkumar is with the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield.

“Cisplatin is widely used as an anti-cancer drug for things like ovarian cancer, testicular cancer, head and neck cancer,” Ramkumar tells WBBM Newsradio. “It has unfortunate side effects, such as permanent hearing loss and neurotoxicity — kidney, acute renal failure.”

Ramkumar’s lab studies ototoxicity. Green tea is an antioxidant, which can fight those side effects. He has been working under a $2.3 million National Institutes of Health grant and is hopeful the FDA will approve testing of the green tea extract on humans.

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