<<Mediterranean diet>>, should be extremely efficient at blocking HER2

[R.B.]

Please excuse me for posting this here but it does seem central, and important to allow those who would not normally give much consideration to the potential of diet as an adjunct to treatment to ponder on it.

The trial is from the eminent J A Menendez, Ruth Lupu and their team and quite recent Nov 2006. The simplistic interpretation is mine.


In essence much still to know but for HER 2

Omega three - good
Omega nine - good
low Omega six - good

Clearly as usual it is not that simple but the summary below adds to the weight of evidence that strict moderation of fat intake, balancing the omega threes and sixes and quality of intake are well worth serious consideration as an adjunct to treatment.

As usual if undertaking significant dietary change please talk to your advisers.


RB





http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...t_uids=17134970

ABSTRACT

CONCLUSIONS: i) These findings reveal that the omega-3 PUFA ALA suppresses overexpression of HER2 oncogene at the transcriptional level, which, in turn, interacts synergistically with anti-HER2 trastuzumab- based immunotherapy. ii) Our results molecularly support a recent randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial suggesting that ALA may be a potential dietary alternative or adjunct to currently used drugs in the management of HER2-positive breast carcinomas. iii) Considering our previous findings demonstrating the <> of the omega-6 PUFA linolenic acid (LA; 18:2n-6) and the <> of the omega-3 PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6n-3) and of the omega-9 monounsaturated fatty acid oleic acid (OA; 18:1n-9), it is reasonable to suggest that a low omega-6/omega-3 PUFA ratio and elevated MUFA levels, the two prominent <> of the <>, should be extremely efficient at blocking HER2 expression in breast cancer cells.
R.B. is online now Edit/Delete Message

[kimber]

RB - the link does not come up. Is there another way to access the information. I am very interested in reading more. Thanks - kim

[R.B.]

Kimber here is the link - my apologies for not checking it.

There is lots more if you search under omega three and omega six, DHA etc on this site (search button on purple bar above)

RB

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=17134970

[StephN]

Thanks R.B.
Next to the article in your link was this one on effects of olive oil, which many of the new members here may not have been aware of. A year or so ago we had long threads on the use of good quality olive oil and the possiblity that its use would be synergistic with Herceptin and especially give those of us hormone neg ladies a leg up with our poorer prognosis. Fitting that category, I have been very faithful in my moderate, daily use of VERY good quality ($$) olive oil. Being NED with this routine, this is one "supplement" I will not change. I also try to balance the omegas as you mentioned, taking flax oil caps.
Article with latest research results follows with red highlights by me.

"Olive oil is an integral ingredient of the "Mediterranean diet" and accumulating evidence suggests that it may have a potential role in lowering the risk of several types of cancers. The mechanisms by which the cancer-preventing effects of olive oil can be performed, however, are not known. We recently hypothesized that a novel molecular explanation concerning the anti-cancer actions of olive oil may relate to the ability of its monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) oleic acid (OA; 18:1n-9) to specifically regulate cancer-related oncogenes. Supporting our hypothesis, exogenous supplementation of cultured breast cancer cells with physiological concentrations of OA was found to suppress the overexpression of HER2 (Her-2/neu, erbB-2), a well-characterized oncogene playing a key role in the etiology, progression and response to chemotherapy and endocrine therapy in approximately 20% of breast carcinomas. OA treatment was also found to synergistically enhance the efficacy of trastuzumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody binding with high affinity to the ectodomain (ECD) of the Her2-coded p185(HER2) oncoprotein. Moreover, OA exposure significantly diminished the proteolytic cleavage of the ECD of HER2 and, consequently, its activation status, a crucial molecular event that determines both the aggressive behavior and the response to trastuzumab of Her2-overexpressing breast carcinomas. Our most recent findings further reveal that OA exposure may suppresses HER2 at the transcriptional level by up-regulating the expression of the Ets protein PEA3 -a DNA-binding protein that specifically blocks HER2 promoter activity- in breast, ovarian and stomach cancer cell lines. This anti-HER2 property of OA offers a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism by which olive oil may regulate the malignant behavior of cancer cells. From a clinical perspective, it could provide an effective means of influencing the outcome of Her-2/neu-overexpressing human carcinomas with poor prognosis. Indeed, OA-induced transcriptional repression of HER2 oncogene may represent a novel genomic explanation linking "Mediterranean diet", olive oil and cancer as it seems to equally operate in various types of Her-2/neu-related carcinomas.
PMID: 16632435 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]"

[R.B.]

Thank you for posting that. It is a very interesting report.

Just for those who have not seen any of these threads Virgin Olive oil seems preferable for a number of reasons. One is that the refined oils have up to 50% omega six, where a good quality virgin oil will have less than 10%. Another is that some of the other benifical chemicals can be removed by processing.

I wondered whether to include the trial. I was worried people might start gulping down olive oil. This was a test tube based experiment which does not always translate into what happens in the body, which is not to say it is not good just maybe less spectacular or more but we don't know for sure.......

The metabolism of fats is very complex.

BC risk has been reported in a number of trials to link to both type of fat and quantity of intake so suggestions to consider would include

1. Balancing the omega threes and sixes as a starting point
2. Using non promoters for cooking variety benefits (eg olive oil) in diet etc and if you need more fat
3. But keeping intake overall strictly moderate for lots of reasons

Moderation is good too. Many trials equate more fat to more BC. Early work showed a straight line graph between BC death rates and TOTAL fat intake.



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0813/is_n2_v15/ai_6482555

"LC: When I came into this field in 1972, if you proposed to do a study on diet and cancer, you would literally be laughed out of the room by your peers. I wrote a grant back in those days to study dietary fat and breast cancer, and one of the reviewers wrote back, "This will contribute nothing to science, but it will contribute a great deal to the folklore of science."

So it's been a very difficult time over the last ten, fifteen years to get people--not only the public, but the medical establishment, the government, and the American Cancer Society--to take the relationship between nutrition and cancer seriously.

NAH: When did scientists first begin to think of dietary fat as a cause of breast cancer?

LC: Over 40 years ago, a scientist named Albert Tannenbaum, at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, carried out a series of classical experiments showing that if animals are fed high levels of fat in their diet, they develop more breast cancers than if they are fed a low-fat diet. Tannenbaum and others published many experiments in the 1940s and 1950s, but no one paid any attention until about 1967, when Kenneth Carroll at the University of Western Ontario in Canada began to study the problem. Now at least 20 groups around the world are involved in similar lines of research.

NAH: What prompted epidemiologists to compare fat consumption in different countries?

LC: The real breakthrough came when the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization published its food balance sheets. The FAO compiled data on the export and import of food in about 50 or 60 countries around the world. Carroll took a look at these and noted how very different food intake was worldwide. If you compare 40 countries, you'll find low breast cancer mortality in countries with low fat intake and the opposite in countries with high fat intake (see graph).

NAH: Couldn't the differences in cancer rates be due to something other than diet?

LC: Evidence from Japan suggests otherwise. The Japanese are exposed to as much environmental pollution as we are, and educationally and health-wise, they are close to or above the U.S. level. Yet the Japanese have breast cancer death rates which are only one-quarter of ours. So there has to be something in the Japanese environment other than pollution or industrialization to account for these low rates.

In addition, when Japanese migrate to Hawaii and California, the second generation's breast cancer death rates come up to the rates of Americans. This suggests that the differences are not based on genetics.

On the other hand, one thing about the Japanese is that their diet is one of the lowest in fat in the world. Among farmers and fishermen, it remains around 11 percent of calories from fat, whereas our diet is 40 percent fat, as are the diets of most western countries.

NAH: What other evidence do we have from populations that a high fat diet promotes breast cancer?

LC: Over time, when a low-risk population's fat intake increases, breast cancer mortality also increases. Since World War II, we've seen dramatic increases in breast cancer in Japan, Greece, and Iceland. The people of these countries eat a lot more fat than they used to."............


"LC: At least 25 independent studies in different countries using different animal models have shown that if you feed animals a low-fat diet (10 to 20 percent of calories) they will exhibit one-third to one-half fewer breast tumors than if you feed them a high-fat diet (40 percent of calories). It is one of the strongest and clearest of all the diet-cancer relationships."...........


" NAH: Which types of fat promote cancer?
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LC: In animal experiments, so far we know that olive, fish, and coconut oil are non-promoters. Lard, beef tallow, corn, safflower, and sunflower oils are promoters. Butter, peanut, canola, and soybean oil haven't been adequately studied."..........