Prevention
He prostate cancer It is the most common neoplasm in men. In 2022, approximately 5,960 men died due to it in Spain and there were nearly 36,000 new cases, according to the Spanish Prostate Cancer Association. But the scientific community has already sent a warning message: In 20 years cases will double and deaths will skyrocket by 85% worldwide.
Between 2020 and 2040, cases of prostate cancer are expected to double worldwide, going from 1.4 million per year in 2020 to 2.9 million per year in 2040. This is the main conclusion of a study from The Lancet Commission on Prostate Cancer. Consequently, deaths will also rise. Thus, in this document it is anticipated that The number of annual deaths due to this neoplasia will increase by 85% in 20 years.
The Medical Technological Institute (IM T) recognizes that there are non-modifiable risk factors (age, race, family history, race and genetic mutations) and modifiable ones, such as being overweight or obese, low physical activity, tobacco and alcohol consumption and, of course, diet. It has been confirmed, comments the institution, that among the most important risk factors for developing prostate cancer are: the content of animal fat in the diet; high caloric intake; the relationship between omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids and meat consumption.
Recently, in three studies, led by researchers from the Carlos III Health Institute and the Andalusian School of Public Health (EASP), the preventive potential of the Mediterranean Diet against prostate, breast and colon-rectal cancer is confirmed. The investigations are framed in the EPIC Project (European Prospective Study on Nutrition and Cancer), coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and which takes place in ten European countries, including Spain. Your goal is investigate the relationship between diet, nutritional status, lifestyles, environmental factors and incidence of different types of cancer and other chronic diseases. The three works, published in scientific journals ‘Maturitas‘‘British Journal of Urology International’ and ‘Nutrients’are part of the EPIC-Spain Project.
Mediterranean diet
The results reinforce the idea that nutritional recommendations should take into account general diet patterns more than individual foods, and confirm that adopting dietary habits that move away from the Western dietary pattern in favor of a Mediterranean diet could reduce the risk of developing prostate, breast and colon-rectal cancer.
The people participating in the EPIC-Spain study with a high adherence to the Western diet pattern showed in the three published studies double the risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer, a 37% higher risk of suffering from breast cancer and a 53% increased risk of having colorectal cancer. On the other hand, high adherence to the Prudente diet pattern was not associated with the risk of developing any of the tumors explored. Finally, the with high adherence to the Mediterranean pattern had a 16% lower risk of developing a tumor malignant in the colon and rectum than those with low adhesions.
Now comes a new new investigation which found that adding a pre-ketone supplement (a component of a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet) to a type of cancer therapy is very effective for treat prostate cancerresearchers at the University of Notre Dame found.
Recently published in the journal Cancer Research, the study by Xin Lu, Associate Professor John M. and Mary Jo Boler in the Department of Biological Sciences, and their collaborators, addressed an issue that oncologists have struggled with: prostate cancer is resistant to a type of immunotherapy called checkpoint blockade therapy immunological (ICB). ICB therapy prevents certain proteins from binding to other proteins and paves the way for our body’s fighting cells, T cells, to eliminate the cancer.
«Prostate cancer It is the most common cancer among men Americans, and immunotherapy has been very influential in some other cancers, such as melanoma or lung cancer, but it has not worked almost at all for prostate cancer,” researcher Lu, affiliated with the Center for Cancer, said in a statement. Boler-Parseghian for Rare and Neglected Diseases.
Adding a dietary supplement could overcome this resistance, the study’s lead author, Sean Murphy, has suggested. a ’24 alumnus who was a PhD student in Lu’s lab, had been following a ketogenic diet. Knowing that cancer cells feed on sugardecided that depriving mouse models of carbohydrates (a key component of the ketogenic diet) could prevent cancer growth.
He divided the models into different groups: immunotherapy alone, ketogenic diet alone, a preketone supplement alone, the ketogenic diet with immunotherapy, the supplement with immunotherapy and the control. While immunotherapy alone had almost no effect on the tumors (as happens in most prostate cancer patients), both the ketogenic diet with immunotherapy and the preketone supplement with immunotherapy reduced cancer and prolonged the life of the mouse.
Supplement with immunotherapy
«It turned out that this combination worked very well. He made the tumor very sensitive to immunotherapy, and 23 percent of the mice were cured; They were tumor-free; in the rest, the tumors shrank in a truly dramatic way”, the authors have stated.
Evidence points to the possibility that a supplement that provides ketones, which is what is produced in the body when people follow a Keto diet, could prevent prostate cancer cells from being resistant to immunotherapy. This may lead to future clinical studies examining how ketogenic diets or ketogenic supplements could improve cancer therapy.
While ketogenic diets allow for minimal carbohydrates, the success of this study is not due to a lack of carbohydrates, Murphy and Lu have emphasized. This is the presence of the ketone body, a substance produced by the liver and used as a source of energy when glucose is not available. Ketones interrupt the cycle of cancer cellsallowing the T cells to do their job of destroying them.
The discovery was also exciting on a molecular level. Any type of dietary study can be affected by the potential issue of causality: Are the diet results or other changes due to the diet? But Lu and his collaborators confirmed their results using DNA sequencing. single cell RNAwhich examines the gene expression of individual cells within the tumor.
“We found that this combination of the supplement and immunotherapy reprogrammed the entire immunological profile of the tumors and recruited many T cells into the tumors to kill prostate cancer cells. The successful therapy also reduced the number of a type of immune cell called neutrophils. Once in the tumor microenvironment, the natural properties of neutrophils are greatly distorted and become largely responsible for inhibiting T cell activities and allowing further tumor progression. Neutrophil dysregulation is also associated with many other diseases,” they commented.
Since the primary ketone body depletes neutrophils, the door is opened for investigate the effects of the ketogenic diet and ketone supplementation in diseases ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to arthritis. “The exciting thing is that we are getting closer to the mechanism, supported by genetic models and what we are seeing in the tumors themselves, of why this works,” they added.