“”Genes may not be the only way cancer passes down the generations. Feeding pregnant rats a fatty diet puts both their daughters and granddaughters at greater risk of breast cancer.
Sonia de Assis of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC and colleagues had discovered that the daughters of pregnant rats fed an unhealthy diet are more likely to develop breast cancer. Now they have shown that even if these daughters eat healthily, their offspring are still at greater risk of disease. Rats don’t normally develop breast cancer, so de Assis had to give the granddaughters a chemical that induces tumours. This put all the granddaughters at increased risk. Crucially, however, rats with grandmothers who ate a fatty diet were even more at risk. Twenty weeks later, half the rats whose grandmothers ate a normal diet developed breast tumours, while 80 per cent of rats with two grandmothers fed a high fat diet got tumours and 68 per cent of the rats with just did one developed cancer.
De Assis, who presented the work at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington DC, says a fatty diet may cause “epigenetic” DNA modifications that can be passed on to future generations. If the process also applies to people, genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are linked with breast cancer, may not be the only reason why a family history of breast cancer puts a woman at risk. “We think that there may be other means of transmission that are not genetic that can account for breast cancer,” says de Assis.”"
Read more at New Scientist
"
So are the rats born after their parents have got the cancer? Rather than getting it vicariously?
oh, thank you, new scientist, fer inciting panic. next i’m guessing they will tell us once again about a fabulous new cancer cure–fer mice. :/
Ya… i’m sure it’s the junk food that’s contributing to the cancer in the offspring… and not the.. CANCER INDUCING CHEMICAL… look .. if your Dad worked out every day for 10 years then conceived you.. it doesn’t make you any stronger or bigger than if he had sat on the couch for that decade and ate potato chips.. the amazing thing about genetics is that the interactions u have with your environment have no effect on your offspring unless something alters the way your seed is constructed… so this research is implying that a high fat diet some how alters the genetic make up of your sperm….. really guys?? come on..
It so can not be transferred to humans like ths ofcourse, not even to other rats (who did not get the chemical) or to rats (the few) that develop breast cancer by itself. Why dont they get breast cancer by the way? They do get a lot of tumours in all other areas I know (not labrats perhaps, but the pet rats, with ageing).
I’m sure so many factors, apart from what food and genes, are influencing your chances of developping cancer (in fact, that is common knowledge I think). It’s a fragile balance, the body, once it gets disrupted by something from the outside too much. It respons quite normal although we wont see it as normal or wish for that normal response if it is being called cancer e.g..
‘Epigenetic’ is the key word .
I checked out the presentation abstract given at the conference. The rats were given heavy doses of Omega 6 or estradiol supplement, which is a sex hormone. It has been known for some time that excess ingestion of omega 6 is not to be recommended. Your reference to junk foods is totally misleading and your blaring headline does you no credit. Why do so many people lump all fats into the junk food category?
Freaky Deaky indeed.
Msg from Abeo: Both headline and article taken directly from New Scientist
Emanuel: Indeed.
Iris: The grandmother rats were fed the high-fat diet (if that’s what it was, since Yossi seems to disagree here) while pregnant with the pups that would become the mothers of the rats that were less cancer resistant (because that’s really what this is — resistance against cancer induced by a certain chemical). So no, no mutations to the DNA of eggs and sperm — but rather, switching on and off of genes in the fetal rat pups. It’s not Lamarckian evolution, it’s the influence of environmental factors on fetal development.
Berber.. what are u arguing?