Conference turris::womannotes-v2

622.0. "High-fat Diets in pregnancy may cause tumors later" by SKYLRK::OLSON () Sat May 27 1989 17:20

	High-fat diet in pregnancy may cause tumors later
	 a Scripps Howard News Service article, reprinted from the 
	 San Jose Mercury News, 26 May 89 without permission.

	Women who eat high-fat diets while pregnant may be predisposing
	their fetuses to cancers of the reproductive system later in life,
	a researcher says.

	Such a connection would be particularly worrisome because physicians
	routinely advise pregnant women to increase their consumption of
	red meat, whole milk, eggs and cheese.  The foods are loaded both
	with the vitamins and minerals needed for fetal development and
	with fat.

	Prenatal exposure to fats dramatically increased tumors of the ovary,
	uterus, and pituitary gland in female mice, said Dr Bruce Walker,
	a professor of anatomy at Michigan State University.  He reported
	his findings at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer
	Research in San Francisco.

	Studying 261 female mice over their two-to-three-year life spans,
	Walker found that among the daughters of mice who had received a
	high-fat diet during their pregnancy--equivalent to the fat consumed
	by the typical American--54 percent developed reproductive system
	tumors.

	Among daughters of mice who consumed a low-fat diet--equivalent
	to the diet of a typical Japanese woman--only 21 percent developed
	such tumors.

	Walker said there were enough critical similarities between mice
	and humans to justify concerns about cancers of the breast, ovary,
	and uterus in women and testicular and prostate cancer in men.

	He said he has not submitted his research for publication in a
	professional journal and was presenting it for the first time at
	the cancer research meeting.

	Other experts on the role of fat in reproductive-system cancers
	were also attending the meeting and could not be reached immediately
	for comment.  As evidence his findings were taken seriously, Walker
	offered the fact that the National Cancer Institute has given him
	a $131,000 grant to expand his research in a five-year study.

	"I'm thoroughly convinced myself that this is a real phenomenon,"
	he said in an interview.  "It is going to apply to women and it's
	going to be established."

	A link between exposure to fats in the womb and later reproductive-
	system cancers could clarify the continuing mystery over the role
	of dietary fat in the United States' high rate of breast cancer,
	Walker said.

	Breast cancer occurs far more frequently among U.S. women, who obtain
	an average of 37 percent of daily calories from fat, than in Japanese
	women, who get about 20 percent from fat.

	But researchers have not been able to confirm that dietary fat promotes
	breast cancer.  Among Japanese-American women who eat typical U.S.
	diets, for example, some have breast cancer rates approaching that
	of the United States, others approaching that of Japan.

	Further examination of studies of these women demonstrates, Walker
	said, that Japanese-American women born in Japan have the lower
	breast cancer rates, while those born in the United States have
	the higher rates.  The difference can be explained, he said, by
	the fat content of the food these women's mothers were consuming
	while pregnant.

	Walker is unsure of the mechanism by which fat in pregnancy predisposes
	a fetus toward developing tumors later in life.  The influence seems
	to act similarly to that of diethylstilbestrol, or DES, the synthetic
	hormone given to some pregnant in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent
	miscarriage.

	The drug has since been confirmed as a cause of a rare vaginal cancer
	in the adult daughters of the women who took the hormone.  Walker
	has found the same effect in mice administered DES experimentally.

	He believes that both DES and dietary fat during pregnancy may affect
	the development of the hypothalamus, which helps determine the balance
	of sex hormones throughout life.  That balance may be related to
	cancers of the reproductive system.

	Establishing this chain of cause and effect, Walker predicted, could
	ultimately lead to improved methods of prevention of breast, ovarian
	and uterine cancer--even among women predisposed by their mothers'
	diets to develop tumors.

	"This country has an epidemic of female reproductive system cancers,"
	Walker said.  "The rates are five to six times what you find in
	Japan.  Reproductive system cancer is the leading cause of death
	in women under 70."

	The researcher conceded the implications of his findings among mice
	will remain speculative until research is conducted among humans.