Bioactive chemicals from carrot (Daucus carota) juice extracts for the treatment of leukemia.

Background:

Overwhelming evidence indicates that the consumption of fruits and vegetables with strong antioxidant properties correlate with reduced risk of a number of cancers include leukaemia. Carrots contain beneficial agents including beta-carotene and polyacetylene which could be effective in the treatment of leukaemia. This study investigated the effect of organic carrot juice extracts (CJE) on four myeloid, four lymphoid together with non tumour haematopoietic stem cells (HSC).,

Method:

Annexin V and Propidium iodide (PI) staining followed by flow cytometric analysis and DAPI (4'-6-Diamidino-2-phenylindole) morphological analysis used to investigate the induction of apoptosis. Moreover, PI cell cycle analysis and cell counts used to investigate the inhibition of cell proliferation.

Results:

This study, demonstrated that treatment of leukaemia cell lines with CJE showed a decrease in the number of live cells and an increase in both apoptotic and necrotic cells in a dose responsive manner with significant decrease in cell number with increasing concentration of carrot juice especially following 72 hour treatments. We demonstrated that the lymphoid cell lines were affected to a greater extent than myeloid leukaemia cell lines. Additionally, the non-tumor haematopoietic stem cells were less sensitive to CJE treatment than the majority of the leukaemia cell lines.

Conclusion:

This study has shown that extracts from carrots can induce cell death and cause cell cycle arrest in leukaemia cell lines which suggests carrots could be an excellent source of bioactive chemicals which could be used in the treatment and or prevention of leukaemia.