The results of a new study conducted by researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia and published in Cancer Prevention Research suggest a link between high-fat diets and an increased risk of colon cancer, according to a Temple University news release.
The researchers, led by Carmen Sapienza, professor of pathology in Temple's Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology, compared colon tissue in non-colon cancer patients and patients with the disease. They found that in normal tissue from colon cancer patients, epigenetic marks on genes involved in breaking down carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids — which are associated with a high-fat diet — appeared retrained.
"These foods are changing the methylation patterns on a person's insulin genes so that they express differently, pumping out more insulin than the body requires," said Prof. Sapienza, in the release. "In people who have colon cancer, their glucose metabolic pathways and insulin signaling pathways are running at completely different levels than people who don't have colon cancer."
Research has shown that cancer cells are attracted to insulin and tumors feed off of it.
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