01 September 2010

Lipid levels and cancer

Hi all! From time to time, I post science, medicine and research related topics, and I really enjoy doing so. I love translating complicated medical findings from peer-reviewed scientific journals into information easily understandable by the general public.

There is a great resource put out by the National Cancer Institute (NCI, National Institutes of health), called the NCI Cancer Bulletin. The monthly bulletin was initiated "under the National Cancer Act of 1971 to educate the public and the clinical and research communities about NCI's efforts and progress against cancer". Source

I greatly enjoy the publication because it's a way to take a quick glance of all progress made month-to-month regarding cancer therapy and requires limited medical/science background.

In the August bulletin, scientists published in Nature Medicine that persons with high lipid levels, display a decreased ability to fight cancer cells by one's own immune (or fighting) cells.

Recent cancer research focuses on coercing one's own immune cells to attack the cancer cells, rather than an off target drug that kills all cells, healthy and cancer - specific. In fact, many scientists postulate that cancer results from some defect in our immune systems. Therefore, strengthening your immune system in a specific way would lead to increased killing of cancer cells.

In the article published, scientists showed that dendritic cells, a key player in our ability to destroy foreign entities (specifically cancer cells) are greatly hindered by high lipid levels. Furthermore, in an experiment, scientists added a drug that lowered lipid levels (by interfering with fatty acid synthesis) and were able to detect increased cancer cell killing by dendritic cells.

Image of a dendritic cell. source

In other words, this study showed for the first time that high lipid concentrations also negatively impact our immune system's ability to fight cancer. Neat, eh? To read the bulletin click here and to see the original publication in Nature Medicine, click here.

*To read about an EXPERIMENT I DID showing what high fat levels look like in your blood click here and here.


Posted by Lauren at 11:54 AM
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7 comments:

  1. and it makes a lot of sense too when u think about it! if the levels of fat in the blood are high, how can one expect the boy to work optimally at fighting toxins and bad microbes swimming through the body. plus im sure the fats would attract any foreign and harmful cells creating a breading ground for disease and cancer. scary!!
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  2. this is such a great post! thanks for sharing!
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  3. I love that you translating them so people like me can get this good info! :)
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  4. Not to beat a dead horse or anything but...
    Basically you're saying that exercising and eating right is healthy, and NOT exercising and eating right is NOT healthy! It's wonderfully simple but the results are just HUGE!
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  5. Thanks for the translation. I'm deathly afraid of getting cancer, with both of my parents passing with it this past year. I guess, according to the article, I am on the right track with the clean eating! It's good to know that I'm doing the right thing :)
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  6. Love the new look of the blog!
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