With the help of Dr. Gaforio, director of the Center for Advanced Studies of Olive Trees and Olive Oil, the conclusion is once again reached that the intake of virgin olive oil, the main element of the Mediterranean diet, is correlated with a low incidence of breast cancer.

Specifically, pinoresinol, from the family of phenols that are abundant in extra virgin olive oil, is a phytoestrogen similar to human estrogens. This research arises from the consideration of the role of estrogens in both the development and progression of cancer and the main objective is to investigate the possible effects of pinoresinol in the prevention of cancer, mainly breast cancer.

In the laboratory they have been able to verify that on normal cells it acts by preventing DNA damage and has an antioxidant effect, while on tumor cells it has a cytotoxic, antiproliferative and pro-oxidant effect, that is, it damages and even kills them. Furthermore, it does so on both metastatic and non-metastatic cells.

For more information, this research is collected in a scientific article published by the prestigious international journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

https://bmccomplementalternmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12906-016-1233-7