RESUMO
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) results from the accumulation of malignant immunologically incompetent lymphocytes. A routine full blood count of a single patient revealed that he had CLL. The daily intake of 700ml of fresh bovine milk resulted in a decrease in the lymphocyte count from 85.5x10(9)/l to 12.5x10(9)/l over a period of 5 years. The aim was to establish which constituent(s) in milk would be responsible for the decline of the lymphocyte count. It was found that the higher vitamin D constituent in the milk, the lower the lymphocyte count. Whilst the milk from large dairy farms which use supplements in the feed in order to increase milk production, considerably decreased the lymphocyte count, the milk from small dairy farms, which do not supplement, had hardly any effect. The present study indicates that gossypol in cottonseed cake and oil are potentially responsible for the decrease in white blood cell count. It appears that gossypol is a very powerful anti-neoplastic agent. Free gossypol (Fig. 1) is a toxic phenolic compound which becomes detoxified in ruminants by binding to milk proteins, but gossypol is still an active inhibitor of tumour growth in the excreted milk.