Dietary Fatty Acids and Mammary Tumorigenesis

Abstract

There has been a literal explosion in the study of the effects of diet on cancer. This development has resulted in part from the realization that it has not been possible to associate the cause of human cancer to specific agents despite the growing list of “potential” human carcinogens. Given the fairly stable age adjusted incidence of various tumors over the past forty years or so, attention has been directed more to factors in the human environment that may have been relatively stable over this period. Consequently attention has been focused on dietary constituents ranging from naturally occurring “carcinogens” occurring in foods to the effects of the macro and micronutrients. There is suggestive but not necessarily conclusive epidemiological evidence that the level of dietary fat is associated with the incidence of some tumors in humans. On the other hand, in experimental animals there is unequivocal evidence that both the level and composition of dietary fat can influence the development of several tumor systems and research is concentrating on attempts to define the mechanism of these effects. The other major question that must be addressed is the extent to which dietary intervention can affect tumorigenesis in humans.