Can a high fat diet increase the risk of breast cancer?

A new study sheds light on the link between a high fat diet, the gut microbiome and cancer progression.

It is breast cancer prevention week soon in the UK and this new study adds to the evidence on how we might be able to use the power of food to lower our risk of the disease.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK and the second most common cancer in women in the US.

Some of the risk factors for breast cancer are alcohol consumption, a sedentary lifestyle, being overweight or obese and smoking. Around 5-10% of breast cancers are thought to be due to genetic predisposition, and the most commonly known are mutations in genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2.   

There is some research implicating diet as a risk factor for developing breast cancer, although the exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. 

A new paper, published recently in the journal PNAS, now sheds light on how a high fat diet may promote the progression of breast cancer and why this is mediated by the gut microbiome. 

Photo by Hasmik Ghazaryan Olson

What is the ‘gut-bone marrow-tumour’ axis?

There is already some evidence that high fat diets disrupt the gut microbiome and increase the risk of cancers, such as colon cancer. 

In this new paper, the researchers fed laboratory mice that already had tumours a high fat diet to assess if this would promote cancer progression.