Calcium and Vitamin D Protect Prostate Against Cancerous Changes From Fatty Diet

For more than twenty years, researchers have suspected that a high-fat Western diet increases the risk of developing certain cancers including prostate cancer. One physicial sign that this is the case is the fact that in animals, Western-style diets can lead to an overgrowth (or hyperproliferation) of epithelial cells.
     Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Henan Medical University in China recently collaborated on a study to test whether this process responds to dietary changes. Reporting in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (January 20, 1999), they say that in mice, changes in the epithelial cells induced by a Western style high-fat diet "can be prevented by increasing dietary calcium and vitamin D alone."
     The researchers gave sets of mice either 1) a control diet; 2) "a Western-style diet (containing reduced calcium and vitamin D and the fat level of the average human Western diet)," or 3) the test "preventative" diet -- a Western-style diet with added dietary calcium and vitamin D. Nine weeks into the diet, the mice were tested to see what was happening to their epithelial cells.
     Mice on the Western-style diet had statistically significant increases in the markers for epithelial cells in parts of the pancreas, mammary gland, and prostate. For the prostate, the area protected was the dorsal lobe. "Adding dietary calcium and vitamin D," the authors report, "markedly suppressed the Western-style diet-induced hyperproliferation of epithelial cells in those tissues...." Their study, they say, confirms previous findings that a Western-style diet produces hyperproliferation of epithelial cells and shows that the changes can be prevented by increasing dietary calcium and vitamin D alone.

Source

Report: Influence of Dietary Calcium and Vitamin D on Diet-Induced Epithelial Cell Hyperproliferation in Mice
Lexun Xue, Martin Lipkin, Harold Newmark, Jiarmin Wang Journal of National Cancer Institute 1999;91:176-81
Authors affiliations:
L. Xue, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Strang Cancer Prevention Center, New York, NY, and Cell Biology Laboratory, Laboratory Center of Medical Sciences, Henan Medical University, Zhengzhou, China; M. Lipkin, H. Newmark, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Strang Cancer Prevention Center; J. Wang, Cell Biology Laboratory, Laboratory Center of Medical Sciences, Henan Medical University.

Some of the earlier work on prostate cancer this study refers to

Xue L, Yang K, Newmark H, Lipkin M. Induced hyperproliferation in epithelial cells of mouse prostate by a Western-style diet. Carcinogenesis 1997;18:995-9. Medline Abstract

Corder EH, Guess HA, Hulka BS, Friedman GD, Sadler M, Vollmer RT, et al. Vitamin D and prostate cancer: a prediagnostic study with stored sera. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 1993;2:467-72. Medline Abstract

Miller GJ, Stapleton GE, Ferrara JA, Lucia MS, Pfister S, Hedlund TE, et al. The human prostatic carcinoma cell line LNCaP expresses biologically active, specific receptors for 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3. Cancer Res 1992;52:515-20. Medline Abstract

Skowronski RJ, Peehl DM, Feldman D. Vitamin D and prostate cancer: 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 receptors and actions in human prostate cancer cell lines. Endocrinology 1993;132:1952-60. Medline Abstract

Pollard M, Luckert PH. Promotional effects of testosterone and high fat diet on the development of autochthonous prostate cancer in rats. Cancer Lett 1986;32:223-7. Medline Abstract
Berg JW. Can nutrition explain the pattern of international epidemiology of hormone-dependent cancers? Cancer Res 1975;35:3345-50. Medline Abstract

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