Mold Toxin May Be Behind Testicular Cancer

[Guest guest]

Mold Toxin May Be Behind Testicular Cancer

Wed Feb 13,11:00 AM ET

By Gardner

HealthScoutNews Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 13 (HealthScoutNews) -- The treatment of testicular cancer

is something of a modern success story, with the vast majority of cases now

curable.

But the cure doesn't come without a cost -- infertility, for one. And the

search for a definitive cause has yielded no good suspects.

Enter a Wake Forest University cancer researcher, who has come up with an

interesting -- albeit highly preliminary -- hypothesis that might explain

why the disease strikes the way it does.

Schwartz, an associate professor of cancer biology and public health

sciences, proposes that testicular cancer, the most common form of cancer

among young men, might be caused by exposure to ochratoxin A, a carcinogen

found in mold that grows on grains and coffee beans. It's also found in

animals, particularly pigs, that eat moldy grain.

" Really, it's an idea, " says Schwartz. " It's a guess. It's not proven. "

Schwartz's theory is outlined in the February issue of Cancer Causes and

Controls, and it reads much like a detective tale.

Too often, searching for the cause of a particular disease is close to

impossible. Testicular cancer, however, has several unique characteristics

that make the search less daunting.

For one thing, the disease is most prevalent among white males in the

15-to-34 age range, which suggests that exposure to the carcinogen occurs

very early in life, even as early as the womb.

Testicular cancer rates are also higher in Northern Europe than in Central

or Southern Europe, and are the highest in Denmark, which has 7.8 cases per

100,000 per year. It's also more common among people of higher socioeconomic

levels, the same group most likely to be breast-fed.

Oddly, the incidence of this type of cancer went way down among Danish and

Norwegian men born during World War II, and increased again after the end of

the war.

That provided an important clue, Schwartz says.

" The tip-off is that whatever causes it is related to some kind of

[domestic] goods or provisions because these countries were occupied and

Sweden was blockaded, " explains Schwartz. " Whatever it is is very likely to

be related to some commodity. The question is 'What?' "

The plot thickens when you consider that pigs are apt to develop certain

kidney problems when they eat rye that often contains ochratoxin A.

The mold is also known to cause kidney cancer in rats and mice. In fetuses,

the testicles develop from the kidneys.

" It's not implausible that something that causes cancer in a kidney could

also cause cancer in an organ that developed out of the kidney, " says

Schwartz. " It's definitely a guess, but it's not an outlandish guess. "

As it turns out, Danes have some of the highest rates of pork consumption in

the world. They also eat a great deal of rye, the cereal grain most often

contaminated by ochratoxin A. Weather conditions during the harvest season

promote growth of the mold, Schwartz explains.

Schwartz's theory goes like this: A woman eats products contaminated with

ochratoxin A while she's pregnant, or her child consumes them as a

youngster. This damages the testicular DNA, and puberty triggers a

malignancy.

If his hypothesis holds true, Schwartz says women could take drugs such as

aspirin and the vitamins A, C and E, which reduce the DNA damage of

ochratoxin A.

" It's a great start, " says nne Berwick, an associate attending

epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

" He's done his best to support it with different types of evidence, but at

this point all he really has is an interesting hypothesis. "

Schwartz's hypothesis now needs to undergo rigorous scientific testing but,

as Berwick points out, many scientific discoveries start out just this way.

What to Do: For more information on testicular cancer, visit The Testicular

Cancer Resource Center or the National Cancer Institute.

http://www.acor.org/TCRC/