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A New Whey to Prevent Cancer
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Researchers are only beginning to discover the links between dietary
choices and health consequences. Now they've taken a major step toward
understanding one of these links.
A team of ARS-funded
investigators—Reza Hakkak, Martin J.J. Ronis, and J. Craig Rowlands—led
by neuroendocrinologist and nutritionist Thomas M. Badger, has found that
a modified whey protein, which Badger developed, prevents breast cancer in
some laboratory rats.
It's an important medical discovery, considering that 180,000 U.S. women
develop breast cancer each year—and 1 in 8 women will develop breast
cancer over her lifetime. Breast cancer is a disease where a mutant cell
in the breast forms a tumor. More than 60 percent of breast cancers are
detected in women age 50 and over.
The researchers studied an animal model of breast cancer. Over 3 years,
female Sprague Dawley rats were fed one of two diets—one containing
casein, the major protein found in milk, the other containing processed
whey protein, which is found in the watery liquid that separates from milk
during cheese making. The researchers have filed for a patent on the
modified whey protein.
"One hundred percent of the rats fed the casein diet developed
mammary tumors, but only about 50 percent of the whey-fed rats developed
tumors," says Badger, who is based at the Arkansas Children's
Nutrition Center in Little Rock. "In addition, it took longer for the
mammary tumors to develop in the whey-fed rats, and they had fewer
tumors."
"This data is extremely important," he says, "because it
demonstrates that in the animal model most used to study human breast
cancer, a common dietary factor reduces the incidence of developing such
tumors."
Badger stresses that the research is preliminary and that researchers
would need to study thousands of women for years to determine the benefits
of a particular dietary factor on breast cancer prevention.
"Breast cancer is an extremely difficult disease to study, because we
never know who will develop it or when it will occur," says Badger.
"Fortunately, we have an animal model of human breast cancer that
provides important insights into breast cancer development and helps us
research new treatments and prevention strategies."
Other research in Badger's laboratory has demonstrated that diets
containing soy protein isolate—the same protein used in soy infant
formulas—reduces the incidence of mammary tumors by about 25 percent in
this same animal model.
Asian women, who eat a lot of soy, have five to eight times less breast
cancer than American women, who eat little soy. Among American women,
white women have the highest incidence of breast cancer and black women
have the highest death rate from it.
It's too early to make specific dietary recommendations about the
proteins, since we've only studied them in rats," says Badger.
"But a diet containing a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grains,
and animal products in the proportions recommended by the USDA Food Guide
Pyramid is healthy. That diet could include soy foods and dairy products
rich in whey protein."
Badger says the center where he works is devoted to understanding
the role of diet and nutrition in human development, particularly from
conception to adolescence. We believe that early dietary intervention can
have positive health consequences during early development and later in
life."—By Tara Weaver-Missick, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
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