Abstract 1885: Dietary stearate reduces abdominal fat, serum leptin and glucose and increases MCP-1

Abstract

Abstract Stearate is a dietary, long-chain saturated fatty acid (C18:0) that has been shown to decrease breast cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro and reduce tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Obesity, or excess adipose tissue, is a risk factor for breast cancer. Our overall hypothesis is that dietary stearate inhibits breast cancer by decreasing body fat. Our goal was to determine whether there was an association between dietary stearate and adipose tissue. Four groups of 10 athymic nude mice each were each fed one of four different diets for 18 weeks (6% corn oil - low fat diet, 17% stearate diet, 17% corn oil diet, or 17% safflower oil diet). Body composition was assessed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and dual energy X-ray absorptionmetry (DXA). Serum concentrations of glucose, insulin, leptin, adiponectin, interleukin-6, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) were also determined. In a repeated measures model assessing the relationship between groups, for fat and lean mass over time the following differences were found: the stearate group had significantly reduced body fat compared to the low fat and the corn oil groups (p<0.001); mice on the high fat diets (stearate, corn oil, and safflower oil) had a significantly increased lean body mass compared to the low fat group (p=0.009, 0.012, and 0.022 respectively). Postmortem measurement revealed no significant changes in organ weight (brain, heart/lungs, liver, and kidney) among the four diet groups. However dietary stearate had less abdominal fat than the other diets although only the low fat - stearate difference was significant (low fat-stearate *p= 0.0043. corn oil-stearate p= 0.0565, and safflower-stearate p= 0.0636). Serum glucose and leptin concentrations were significantly reduced in the stearate diet mice (glucose, p<0.039, stearate vs all other diets, leptin, p<0.015, stearate vs low fat and corn oil diets). Serum MCP-1 was increased in stearate diet mice compared to either the low fat or safflower oil mice (p<0.019). Significant differences were not observed with the other analytes. Studies have suggested that glucose and leptin have cancer promoting effects, while MCP-1 may promote or inhibit breast cancer. Overall these data support our hypothesis that dietary stearate decreases body fat and that this decrease in body fat may be related to stearate inhibition of breast cancer. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1885.