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By Rene Ruiz-Isasi, MD
NEW YORK, Mar 06 (Reuters Health) - Eating oysters, chocolate, liver, seeds or nuts as part of a balanced diet may prove to help reduce your risk of colon cancer, if recent animal studies performed by US government researchers are confirmed in humans.
All these foods are high in copper, an essential trace element that is present in inadequate amounts in many people's diets, according to scientists with the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Grand Forks, North Dakota. A growing body of evidence suggests that a low-copper diet may significantly increase the risk of colon cancer.
In recent studies, Dr. Cindy D. Davis and colleagues found that rats raised on only one-fifth of their copper requirement were significantly more prone to develop colon cancer precursors than were animals who received adequate amounts of copper, after both groups were given a cancer-causing chemical. One report on the investigation was published in the Journal of Nutrition in 1999, another is awaiting publication.
The research may add copper to the list of substances, including selenium, calcium and fiber, which are now considered important for a healthy colon.
In a related experiment, Davis and associates looked for a copper connection in a strain of mice known to have a genetic predisposition to develop tumors in the intestine. In this experiment as well, the mice who were fed the copper-deficient diet had intestinal tumors that were both more numerous and larger than those developed by the mice who had a diet adequate in copper. That study was published in the journal Cancer Letters last year.
Although it is not possible to make conclusions about human beings based on animal studies, the genetically altered mice make a very good model for testing the effects of changes in diet on colon cancer, Davis said. The mouse mutation is similar to an inherited disorder, familial adenomatous polyposis, where family members spontaneously develop intestinal tumors.
Since colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and since diet is thought to be the single greatest risk factor in human colon cancer, the copper connection might have significant public health implications, according to the researchers.
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