High-fat diet in pregnancy increases breast cancer risk over generations in animal study
Their study, published online today in Breast Cancer Research , suggests a research direction for examining the diet of pregnant women, says the study's senior author, Leena Hilakivi-Clarke, PhD, professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi. "It is believed that environmental and life-style factors, such as diet, plays a critical role in increasing human breast cancer risk, and so we use animal models to reveal the biological mechanisms responsible for the increase in risk in women and their female progeny," says Hilakivi-Clarke. A high-fat diet is linked to excess inflammation, and a number of epidemiological studies have made the connection between inflammation and risk of cancer, she says. Hilakivi-Clarke has found in earlier studies that mice that eat a high fat diet when they are pregnant have "daughters" that are at excess risk of the cancer. This study, however, found that if pregnant mice were switched to a high fat diet during their second trim...