Researchers from the United States have found that a common cough medicine ingredient can treat advanced prostate cancer.

The ingredient is called noscapine which has been used for cough medication for over 50 years, the researcher team said that noscapine not only reduced tumor growth in mice by 60 percent, but also limited the spread by 65 percent without any major side-effects.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 186,320 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 and 28,660 will die from it.

Dr. Israel Barken of the Prostate Cancer Research and Educational Foundation in San Diego, Moshe Rogosnitzky of MedInsight Research Institute and Dr. Jack Geller of The University of California, San Diego, said noscapine, a naturally-occurring, non-addictive derivative of opium, cannot be patented, which has limited the potential for clinical trials.

The team is hoping and encouraging academic institution to follow up this successful laboratory research with a human clinical trial.

Via – Insidekerala.com