Hot chili peppers might help fight prostate cancer: study

A team of US cancer scientists found in tests on mice that capsaicin could provoke apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in the cells behind human prostate cancer, the most common cancer among men in the United States.

According to the scientists at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the tests showed the potential of repressing the growth of the cancer cells in humans.

"Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture," said the institute's Soren Lehmann.

"It also dramatically slowed the development of prostate tumors formed by those human cell lines grown in mouse models," he said.