Colorectal cancer, the second most common cause of deaths relating to the disease, is most likely to be spread by a diet rich in fat and low in fibre, vitamin D, and folic acid. Researchers said the earliest changes in normal colonic mucosa- the first layer of the intestines were nutrients, fats, and protiens are absorbed from the food we eat, has the potential to lead to the early detection and prevention of cancer development.
Marjaana Pussila, doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, said, "We wanted to be able to spot cancer-predicting events in the colon mucosa before tumours developed." Her team carried out a long-term diet experiment on genetically engineered mice model affected with Lynch syndrome. A mouse with the form of cancer carries a mutation in Mih1, a mismatch repair gene, which is one of the main susceptibility genes in the disease. Each time the cells divide, DNA replicates itself.
The study showed that the gene expression profiles of normal mucosa in those mice that developed colon cancer were very different from those of the mice that did not. "This seems to indicate that there is a colon-wide effect of events that predispose to cancer. And the western-style diet seemed to be a severe risk factor, since 80 per cent of cancers were detected in such mice," she said.
