Diets Rich in Sugar Up Breast Cancer Risk

It found that diets high in sugar were more likely to lead to prostate, colorectal and pancreatic cancers.

These results support previous studies which have shown that fructose is also affecting pancreatic tumors.

A press release from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center describing the recent study can be found here.

Sugary western diets may increase risk for cancer – especially breast cancer – and metastatic lung tumors, research suggests.

Although the researchers could not pinpoint exactly why fructose caused faster cancer progression, they did find that it made the LOX-12 pathway, which is tied to cancer, more active.

Researchers noticed that mice fed with a sucrose-rich diet just like our own Western diet, higher level of metastasis and tumor growth were seen as the cancer spread.

“This was due, in part, to increased expression of 12-LOX and a related fatty acid called 12-HETE”, said Yang. Their findings are consistent with a plethora of past studies that had shown a link between high sugar consumption and an elevated risk of developing cancer.

Dr. Cohen added, “We determined that it was specifically fructose, in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, ubiquitous within our food system, which was responsible for facilitating lung metastasis and 12-HETE production in breast tumors”.

Of the four types of meals given to mice, the low-sugar, high-starch diet was found to have the least effect on the cancer – at six months, only 30 percent of the mice on this diet had developed breast cancer, as opposed to the more than half of the mice on the sucrose diet.

Sugar consumption on average in the United Kingdom is now 35 kilos.

Sucrose is made up of two different sugars, fructose and glucose. “However, the inflammatory cascade may be an alternative route of studying sugar-driven carcinogenesis that warrants further study”. Cohen’s team used mice for their study but say they took many steps to make sure the process was as close as possible to what happens in people. The researchers have conducted four different studies in which mice were randomly divided into different diet groups and fed one of four diets. Whereas 30 percent of mice on a starch-control diet developed measurable tumors, more than 50 percent of the mice on sucrose-enriched diets developed tumors.

This study showed as well that the amount of lung metastases was higher in the mice that were eating sucrose or fructose enriched diets versus the mice on a controlled diet. “How dietary sucrose and fructose induces 12-HETE and whether it has a direct or indirect effect remains in question”, Cohen added.

In the current research, fructose was especially found to affect a metabolic process called 12-LOX, which helps cells spread. “This preliminary animal research suggests that it does matter”, said Lorenzo Cohen of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who worked on the study.