BBC NEWS | Health | Pepper ‘to treat pigment disease’
Pepper ‘to treat pigment disease’
Black pepper could provide a new treatment for the skin disease vitiligo, research suggests.
Vitiligo is a condition in which areas of skin lose their normal pigment and become white.
Researchers discovered that piperine – the compound that gives black pepper its spicy, pungent flavour – can stimulate pigmentation in the skin.
A stressful life may make it tougher to fight the virus which causes the majority of cervical cancer cases, say scientists.
HPV is a sexually transmitted infection – but only a small percentage of women who catch it develop cancer.
US researchers, writing in the journal Annals of Behavioural Medicine, said that stressed women had a weaker immune response to the virus.
But the study did not prove that stress was the root cause of the problem.
