Bacteria Migrating to Breast May Cause Cancer

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The readers of this blog are probably aware of my interest in the causes and related cures of diseases.  Juxtaposition of recent research findings has made me reconsider the role of bacteria in breast cancer.

The Findings

• Lactation/breastfeeding lowers risk of breast cancer (improves path of normal mammary duct micro biome from nipple.)
• Tubal ligation lowers risk of ovarian cancer (eliminates path for bacteria from vagina.)
• Aspirin reduces pancreatic cancer (by reducing inflammation involved in the transition from bacterial infection to cancer.)
• Pancreatic and breast cancer risks are both dramatically increased by BRCA (tumor suppressor genes involved in 5% of breast cancer.)
• Bacteria are transported from gut to blood to breast to milk to infants.  (Google entero-mammary bacterial circulation involving intestinal M cells and dendrocytes.)

Bacteria Have Access to Organs with Common Cancers

Serum or fluid flows from organs outward; liver to gall bladder to intestines, pancreas to intestines, prostate to urethra, ovary to fallopian tube to uterus to vagina.  In each case there is also an related infection and inflammation associated with the backward path to the organ.  Urinary tract infections can lead to prostatitis.  Vaginitis can lead to pelvic inflammation, gastritis to stomach cancer, and intestinal infection/inflammation can result in pancreatitis.  The theme seems to be that bacterial infections can cause inflammation that leads to cancer.

Bacterial Path to the Breast

Lactating women occasionally have bacteria that migrate back up milk ducts to cause mastitis, but this is not quite parallel to my other examples of bacterial movement, because women are not continually producing milk.  There is, however, another path of bacteria to mammary tissue.  Prior to birth, bacteria move from the maternal gut, through the blood (presumably in lymphocytes) and into mammary tissue.  Subsequent nursing transports the bacteria to the infant to initiate the milk controlled gut flora unique to exclusively breastfed infants.

Monthly Transport of Bacteria to Breast

The menstrual cycle is an abbreviated ovulation, conception, gestation and birth, which suggests that just as in the normal prelude to lactation, there may also be monthly transport of gut bacteria to mammary tissue.  These bacteria may also cause infection and inflammation, though they may not be sufficient to cause more than transient breast tenderness.

Healthy Gut Flora Means Healthy Breasts

I expect that many diseases in infants may be associated with the wrong bacteria being transported from maternal gut to breast to infant.  Clearly, if the mother suffers from dysbiosis, which is very common, it may be difficult for the correct Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria to be transported to mammary tissue.  Transport of other bacteria may cause problems.  Those problems may be severe as a consequence of menstrual cycles that don’t end in pregnancy, but rather end in infection, inflammation and breast cancer.  It may all come down to gut flora.  The difference between women who develop breast cancer and those that remain healthy may be the health of their gut flora.  Breastfeeding, of course, reduces the risk of breast cancer, as well as improving infant gut flora.  Formula is always a risk factor for infant health, because it attacks normal infant gut flora and promotes inflammation. Since many breast cancers naturally resolve, it may also be the case that a healthy immune system can reverse breast cancer and the health of the immune system is determined by the gut flora.

Can Apple’s HealthKit Avoid Health-Exploitation?

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More healthcare begets more health costs and less health.  Tests detect symptoms that trigger treatment, but more often than not fail to contribute to health.  Apple’s newly announced HealthKit promises to facilitate increased surveillance of personal health statistics and to integrate the data with the health industry.  If recent history is a guide, more data will simply mean more inappropriate interventions, greater expense and further deterioration of public health.  More public interaction and scrutiny is needed to keep the public safe from the health industry and to hold doctors to their pledge to do no harm.

Breast, Prostate and Pelvic Exams Lead to Costly, Harmful, Unnecessary Interventions

In the last two years, major studies have found that frequent breast exams, prostate tests and pelvic exams cause more harm than good.  The surgery, followup procedures and treatments that the screening tests trigger are worse than the cancers that went unnoticed under more relaxed scrutiny.  The bottom line is that the information gathered from screening was not sufficient to produce appropriate, measured treatment.  Patients were harmed without benefit and the health industry was compromised by increased profits from inappropriate tests and treatments.  Doctors routinely convinced themselves of the value of routine exams that they performed to yield excessive false positives that resulted in unnecessary biopsies or disfiguring surgery.  Those flawed exams, tests and procedures also contributed substantially to the profitability of their practices.  Patients may have inadvertently been harmed, but the doctors knew that they benefited.

The Health Industry Pursues Profitable Tests and Treatment, not Causes and Cures

I was astounded a few years ago to read an article in the biomedical literature by a researcher who bemoaned the lack of interest in understanding the causes of diseases and the pursuit of cures.  Public and private funds were only spent on patent-protected tests and treatments.  I watched as the development and testing of fecal transplants demonstrated a safe and effective treatment for numerous diseases, and yet this approach was tracked down and caged by the health industry.  I think broad use of this approach could save billions of health dollars, but there is no patent protection and minimal profit, so the approach was stiffled.  The efficacy of fecal transplants also points directly at damaged gut flora (and antibiotics) as the cause of many diseases.  Where is the public forum to discuss the use of public funds to promote approaches that are safe, effective, cheap, but without potential for proprietary exploitation?  What will happen to simple cures, such as resistant starch and probiotics with Clostridium butyricum?

Is HealthKit Personal Data for Personal or Corporate Gain?

Will there be mechanisms for individuals to contribute their HealthKit data to large scale public health experiments to determine simple lifestyle, dietary and exercise approaches that can replace expensive and destructive pharmaceutical-based health industry approaches?  HealthKit provides the potential to wrest health from the health industry.  We will see if there is an app for that.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Antioxidants and Cancer

It is hard to sort out the inflammatory effects of short/long-chain omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Vegetable antioxidants make the picture even worse. The absolute, as well as relative amounts, of the various types of fatty acids make a difference. It also now appears that oxidation prior and during digestion may be important to the impact of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). The source (perhaps even the meal composition) of the PUFAs was as important as omega-3 versus omega-6, for common, short chain PUFAs.

In some studies, omega-3 PUFAs, such as the short-chain alpha linolenic acid (ALA) common in flax seed or the long-chain fish oil FUFAs, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), reduced cancer in human and mice. Earlier work in cell cultures showed that all of PUFAs suppressed the growth of cancer cells.

A large French study (reference below) began in 1993. Approximately 100,000 women between the ages of 40 and 65 volunteered to provide dietary and breast malignancy information and ca. 75,000 qualified for the study (the French component of EPIC, European Investigation of Cancer and Nutrition) . The dietary data provided information on the fatty acid composition of meals and revealed who was eating vegetable antioxidants and vitamins.

Major findings:

• Neither omega-6 nor omega-3 fatty acids were related directly to breast cancer risk.
• Long chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) reduced breast cancer in the group of women with the highest consumption of omega-6 PUFAs.
• High LA or ALA consumption in the form of vegetable oils or vegetables reduced cancer incidence.
• High LA or ALA consumption in the form of processed foods or nuts was associated with a higher incidence of breast cancer.
• Longer chain PUFAs were not associated with increased risk, regardless of source.

What does this mean?

• The source of the PUFA is of paramount importance. This study may apply more specifically to cancers and less to other inflammation-based degenerative diseases. The general anti-inflammatory diet may need refinement. I would suggest the following additions:
• Retain the preference for the more omega-3 friendly olive oil or perhaps flax oil versus the omega-6 rich vegetable oils (corn, soy, safflower), but focus on freshness and do not heat these oils.
• The data seem to be in favor of saturated fats for cooking. That means a shift to coconut oil.
• Vegetable antioxidants may be most important in the gut during digestion. Do these antioxidants even enter the blood stream? Certainly some alkaloids get to the brain, but much of the impact of the less mobile, large molecules may be restricted to the gut.
• An extension of this discussion may be to encourage eating more leafy vegetables with meat. That may be the paleo-diet connection.

reference:
Thiébaut AC, Chajès V, Gerber M, Boutron-Ruault MC, Joulin V, Lenoir G, Berrino F, Riboli E, Bénichou J, Clavel-Chapelon F. 2009. Dietary intakes of omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and the risk of breast cancer. Int J Cancer. Feb 15;124(4):924-31.