Preliminary studies have shown that turmeric has both anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties and several early phase clinical trials involving oral intake of curcumin (the active component of turmeric) have be shown to reduce inflammatory disease and even slow down or halt the progression of pre-cancerous conditions.
We are interested to see if turmeric affects our ‘epigenetics’ – a process that can cause our genes to become switched on and off, and whether these changes could potentially explain some of the protective anti-cancer effects of turmeric consumption.
At the lab we have received blood samples from 82 healthy individuals who took part in the program and provided a sample both before and after a 6 week intervention requiring either; consumption of turmeric spice as part of their daily diet, daily intake of turmeric capsules, or daily intake of a dummy (non-turmeric) pill.
We have extracted and processed the DNA from the blood samples and added the treated DNA to specialised ‘beadarrays’ that allow us to simultaneously assess over 800,000 individual epigenetic sites per sample. The raw data has now been generated which includes over 130 million data points and is currently being analysed by our bio-statistician. We eagerly await the results!
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