Medical expert of the article
New publications
Fat food in the diet of pregnant women provokes breast cancer from their daughters
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Fat food, which is present in the diet of pregnant women, can increase the risk of developing breast cancer not only in the future mother, but also in her offspring - daughters, granddaughters and their children.
A scientific article by scientists from the University of Georgetown in Washington was published in the journal Nature Communications.
"We know that the diet of the mother affects the health of her children. But our studies for the first time showed how much this influence is great. The high concentration of estrogens in the body, as well as the consumption of fatty foods, clearly affected the health of the experimental rats. We have studied this relationship and the hereditary factor in the development of cancer, "says co-author Lena Hilakivi-Clark.
Specialists were interested in "family" causes of breast cancer. According to experts, approximately 15% of women with breast cancer had several relatives with a similar oncological disease in their family. This circumstance prompted scientists to take up the study of this problem.
Researchers have identified the relationship between high-calorie foods and the risk of developing breast cancer. To determine whether there is an effect of such a diet on the offspring, experts conducted experiments in rats.
Female animals are divided into three groups. The first group was fed normal food, the second group had a diet consisting of fat-saturated foods. On such a diet, rats "sat" after conception and throughout pregnancy. The third group was fed on fatty foods with estrogen hormone supplements only in the last weeks of pregnancy.
As a result of summing up, it turned out that high-calorie food had a very negative effect on the offspring of the experimental rats - the number of tumors in the pups of such animals was 55-60% higher than in the control group. A similar situation arose with the health of those whose mothers were fed fatty foods with the addition of estrogen on the last days of pregnancy.
Experts say that this negative effect persisted in the next two generations of rodents and the inheritance of the male or female line did not matter.
According to the researchers, the cause of this heredity is the change that has occurred in the protein structure of DNA molecules in the cells of the embryo.
Changes of this kind can persist for several generations and be a threat to the development of breast cancer.
"This problem is very urgent in the modern context, when the society is literally saturated with fatty foods, in which large doses of estrogen are often found," the authors of the work say.
[