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# Quercetin helps green tea to fight cancer
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/quercetin_helps_green_tea_to_fight_cancer_0427120655/
- Published: 2012-04-27T19:54:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T16:04:50.000Z
- Description: Mice with severe combined immunodeficiency drank brewed green tea, ate a diet with 0.4% quercetin, or both for two weeks. Rutgers researchers report the combination raised total and non-methylated EGCG two- to threefold in lung and kidney. Quercetin inhibits the methylation that blunts catechins.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Supplements, Nutrition, #vivvo-import

By Maria Cendejas

Green tea catechins like EGCG have shown to increase metabolism to help with weight loss and has been verified as a long history as a effective tool to fight many different types of cancer. Compounds in green tea act as powerful antioxidants that can help apoptosis or programmed cell death (mechanism missing in cancer cells that permits uncontrolled cell growth), according to Natural News.

Researchers from Rutgers University published the result of a study in the journal Food and Function and it explains a synergistic health-promoting relationship when green tea polyphenols and the flavonoid quercetin are provided through diet or supplementation.

Quercetin helps boost the levels of green tea polyphenols in cancer cells to lower methylation of their anti-cancer compounds, effectively increasing the green teas potency as a cancer-fighting agent.

In past studies, scientists have confirmed that green tea catechins go through extensive methylation after ingestion, lowering the usefulness of the health-promoting compounds to shield against cancer proliferation. Quercetin is a known inhibitor of methylation in normal metabolism. A study was conducted by using mice to determine if the naturally occurring flavonoid found in many fruits and vegetables could boost the potency of green tea catechins.

Mice with rigorous combined immunodeficiency were given brewed green tea and a diet supplemented with 0.4% quercetin alone or in combination for a period of two weeks. 

The researchers concluded that the supplemented group experienced a 2-3 times increase of total and non-methylated EGCG in the lung and kidney also an increasing trend in the liver.

The study found that combining quercetin with fresh brewed catechins from green tea increased the cellular adsorption of EGCG four times in lung cancer cells and two times in kidney cancer cells, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of this natural cancer fighting compound in vivo. 

The research team concluded that in order to have a maximum anticancer effect, green tea or green tea extract should be used together with quercetin. They also noted that green tea catechins exhibit higher antioxidant potential than either vitamin C or E, and indicated that consuming the beverage was associated with reduced risk for a number of forms of malignancy including skin cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, esophageal cancer and bladder cancer. Three to five cups of fresh-brewed green tea daily combined with quercetin from fruits and vegetables or supplementation are suggested to synergistically boost the cancer fighting abilities of EGCG catechins.