WOMEN may be able to protect their daughters against breast cancer by eating more omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy and breastfeeding, animal studies suggest.
Elaine Hardman at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana looked at the effects of mothers鈥� diets on mice predisposed to develop breast cancer. Female mice whose mothers ate a diet rich in omega-6 fatty acids and which ate the same diet themselves after weaning all developed tumours by six months. The diets of most people in western countries are much richer in omega-6 oils than omega-3s.
In mice whose mothers ate a diet richer in omega-3s, or mice fed this diet only after weaning, tumour rates fell to 60 per cent. In female mice fed the omega-3-rich diet and whose mothers ate it as well, the rate fell to just 13 per cent, Hardman told a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research this week.
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The findings add to the growing evidence that longer-chain omega-3 oils can help combat some kinds of cancer. Oily fish are rich in these omega-3s, but because of mercury pollution, health agencies advise young women to limit their intake to two portions a week. Alternatively, people can take purified oil supplements, Hardman says. Plant sources contain shorter-chain omega-3s and it is not clear how efficiently the body converts these to longer-chain omega-3s.
