THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

According to a media release we received yesterday, a new paper in the British Journal of Nutrition suggests that “walnuts may help to prevent prostate cancer risk.”

Of course what the study actually shows is that

… prostate tumors in mice fed the human equivalent of three ounces per day of walnuts were approximately 50% smaller and grew 30% slower than prostate tumors in control mice. In addition to lower plasma insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a biomarker strongly associated with prostate cancer, walnut fed mice had lower LDL (bad) cholesterol as well as distinct differences in their liver metabolome, a chemical inventory of what the liver – a major source of both IGF-1 and cholesterol – is doing.

We are pleased to hear that the mice are doing well, but as a scientific justification that eating walnuts would help to prevent prostate cancer in man, these data are somewhat less than compelling.

When you look at the actual abstract of the paper referred to, it is entitled, “A high-fat containing whole walnuts (Juglans regia) reduces tumour size and growth along with plasma insulin-like growth factor 1 in the transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate model.” A high-fat diet is not generally considered to be a good idea for humans at all, and there have been considerable data to suggest that a high-fat diet is specifically associated with an increase in risk for prostate cancer (although these were not fats derived from walnuts).

Walnuts are nice. Your author eats them regularly. However, it is inappropriate to suggest there is any real justification (as yet) for the idea that eating walnuts would decrease one’s risk for prostate cancer.

We haven’t seen the full text of this paper, but it looks to us as though funding for this study may have had its original home with people associated with the marketing of walnuts! Now there’s a shocking idea! … Oh, we were right, the media release came from the California Walnut Commission (although they don’t actually admit to funding the study itself).

Filed under: Diagnosis, Prevention, Risk Tagged: | Prevention, risk, walnut