Omegas-3 and -6, high and low fat and colon cancer growth

October 18, 2002

Hi All, This paper: PMID: 12359365 [PubMed - in process] presents data

indicating that omega-3 fats are good to slow human tumor tissue grafted

into mice immunocompetent and there able to accept foreign cells for growth.

They looked at the effect of feed the mice high 24% omega-6 corn oil versus

omega-3 menhaden or golden algae oil. Much reduced growth was seen.

Moreover, there was also a big reduction versus low omega-6 corn oil.

I end up taking 3% or so corn oil from popcorn and now wonder about such

things. I try to balance this with fatty fish. The little canola and oil

oils, nuts and flax seeds I take really do not amount to much. Low good

fats were not looked at and I wonder about what such studies might tell us.

Cheers, Al.

Cancer Lett 2002 Dec 10;187(1-2):169

Influence of omega-3 fatty acids on the growth of human colon carcinoma in nude

mice.

Kato T, Hancock R, Mohammadpour H, McGregor B, Manalo P, Khaiboullina S, Hall M,

Pardini L, Pardini R.

The present study investigated the influence of dietary omega-3 fatty acid

supplementation on the growth of human colon carcinoma xenograft in athymic nude

mice. ........ Animals were maintained on a standard diet modified by

addition of fats containing omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids to represent high

and low fat intakes for 53 days. The final mean estimated tumor weight for the

high fat corn oil (24%) fed group was 2302mg, whereas the low fat (8% corn oil)

group was 1681mg. The final mean tumor weight of the high fat menhaden oil fed

group was 782mg representing a 66% decrease in growth compared to the high fat

corn oil group and a decrease of 54% compared to the low corn oil fed group. The

high fat golden algae oil fed group resulted in a mean final tumor weight of

223mg representing a 90% inhibition of tumor growth relative to the high fat

corn oil fed group and 87% inhibition of growth compared to the low fat corn oil

fed group. These findings indicate that dietary omega-3 fatty acids possess

significant tumor suppressing properties and that the primary tumor suppressing

fatty acid is docosahexaenoic acid. Histopathologic examination of control and

treated tumors and expression array analyses (human cytokine and apoptosis

arrays) support the tumor growth inhibition data and provide evidence for

discussion of possible mechanisms for the observed growth inhibition.

PMID: 12359365 [PubMed - in process]

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