Preliminary Study Shows Fish Oil Favourably Affects Prostate Cancer Cells

From Nutri Newsletter, Jan 3 2011

A new study, published in Cancer Prevention Research has found that a low fat diet supplemented with fish oil may help to slow the growth of prostate cancer cells compared to a traditional high-fat Western diet.

In the study, 48 men undergoing prostatectomy were randomly assigned to receive either a low fat diet with 5g fish oil daily – a dietary omega 6: omega 3 ratio of 2:1, or a control Western diet, with an omega 6: omega 3 ratio of 15:1, for 4 – 6 weeks prior to the operation.

The researchers found that:

• Although serum markers of prostate cancer were unaltered, the fish oil supplementation reduced benign and malignant prostate tissue omega 6: omega 3 ratios and was shown to reduce and slow cell growth proliferation in vivo.
  
  
• Results also showed that blood from patients receiving fish oil slowed the growth of prostate cancer cells in vivo when compared to blood from men assigned to the Western diet, which did not slow cancer growth.
  

Study author, Dr William Aronson commented, “The finding that the low-fat, fish oil diet reduced the number of rapidly dividing cells in the prostate cancer tissue is important because the rate at which the cells are dividing can be predictive of future cancer progression.”

“The lower the rate of proliferation, the lesser the chances that the cancer will spread outside the prostate, where it is much harder to treat.”

He added, “You truly are what you eat, we are extremely pleased about our findings, which suggest that by altering the diet, we may favourably affect the biology of prostate cancer.”

The researchers added that because of the short duration and small sample size of the study, further research was needed before dietary changes could be fully recommended.  A larger study following 100 men over the course of a year is now planned.

by Rachel Bartholomew Dip ION MBANT

 

References:

Cancer Prevention Research
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1158/1940-6207.CAPR-11-0298
Aronson, W.J. Kobayashi, N. et al. Phase II Prospective Randomised Trial of a Low-Fat Diet with Fish Oil Supplementation in Men Undergoing Radical Prostatectomy