“Soursop, 10,000 times stronger than chemo”?

As my father was battling with cancer a year ago, something caught my attention and I wanted to research about the topic. I remember someone sending an email to my mother saying that soursop is "10,000 times stronger than chemo" and that it is a “cancer cure”. I thought this is a very strong statement, so I decided to go after the truth about it. Chemotherapy is a widely known form of cancer treatment and is effective at destroying cancer cells however, as commonly known it may come with numerous side effects. Some of those side effects that are more than likely inevitable, are those of hair loss, nausea, loose of weight and strength. This is because while chemo is destroying those harmful cancer cells in the body it is also causing harm to the normal healthy cells.

Soursop is the fruit of Annona muricata, a broadleaf, flowering, evergreen tree native to Mexico, Cuba, Central America, the Caribbean and northern southern America. As I went doing some research I found many articles calling this fruit the miraculous “cure for cancer”, but what does science have to say about it? Last year the Department of Food Science and Technology of Virginia Tech published an article where they report that that a soursop fruit extract significantly downregulated the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) which is an oncogene frequently overexpressed in breast cancer gene expression and inhibited the growth of breast cancer cells. In 2002 the Institute of Natural Products in Taiwan, also published an article where they state that new compounds from Soursop exhibited significant activity in cytotoxic (toxic cells) assays against two human hepatoma (liver cancer) cell lines. According to Cancer Research UK, Annona muricata is an active principle in an unlicensed herbal remedy marketed under the brand name Triamazon. But, Triamazon is not licensed for medicinal use and the sale of the product resulted in a conviction on four counts of selling unlicensed medical products, and other charges. However, I did not find any large scale studies in humans, so I believe to say it is “the cancer cure” is rushing things a little too much. I couldn’t find any studies either to support the idea that this fruit is 10,000 times stronger than chemo, so I think for the moment we can enjoy the freshness of a tropical juice with very promising anticancer effects and let science do its job before jumping into any conclusion.