New Delhi: A new study has warned that the popular high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet, often followed for weight loss, could increase the risk of an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Researchers from the University of Utah in the US found that elevated lipid levels caused by fatty acids, a hallmark of obesity that promotes tumour growth, may also fuel the development of triple-negative breast cancer.
The study, conducted on preclinical mouse models, suggests that breast cancer patients and survivors with obesity could benefit from lipid-lowering therapies and should avoid high-fat weight loss regimens such as the keto diet.
“The key here is that people have underestimated the importance of fats and lipids in the all-encompassing term that is obesity,” said Keren Hilgendorf from the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. “But our study shows that breast cancer cells are really addicted to lipids, and the abundance of lipids in patients with obesity is one of the reasons that breast cancer is more prevalent and more aggressive in these patients,” she added.
The research team examined mouse models fed on high-fat diets and others genetically engineered to develop hyperlipidaemia, high lipid levels in the blood, without showing other common signs of obesity such as elevated glucose or insulin levels.
Findings published in the journal Cancer and Metabolism revealed that high lipid levels alone were enough to accelerate tumour growth. Conversely, reducing lipid levels, even when glucose and insulin remained high, was sufficient to slow cancer cell growth.
The researchers cautioned that while keto diets may lead to weight loss, which can be beneficial for some patients, their high-fat content “can have serious unintended side effects -- even causing the tumour to grow.”
The study also indicated that lipids might drive tumour progression not only in breast cancer but potentially in other obesity-linked cancers such as ovarian and colorectal cancer.