Low-Fat Diet May Be Key in Preventing Prostate Cancer

Men with prostate cancer who ate a low-fat diet and took fish oil supplements showed changes in their cancer tissue that may help prevent disease growth and recurrence, according to a new study by UCLA researchers.

The patients who followed the regimen had lower levels of "pro- inflammatory substances" in their blood and a lower "cell cycle progression score" — a measure that is used to predict cancer recurrence — than men who ate a typical Western diet, UCLA researchers found.

The findings are important because lowering the cell cycle progression score, known as the CCP score, may help prevent prostate cancers from becoming more aggressive, according to William Aronson, the study's lead author.

Aronson is a clinical professor of urology at UCLA and chief of urologic oncology at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

"We found that CCP scores were significantly lower in the prostate cancer in men who consumed the low-fat fish oil diet as compared to men who followed a higher-fat Western diet," Aronson said.

"We also found that men on the low-fat fish oil diet had reduced blood levels of pro-inflammatory substances that have been associated with cancer," Aronson said.

The study appears in the early online edition of Cancer Prevention Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Prostate cancer is a leading cause of death among men in the United States. It is estimated that more than 230,000 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and that 29,000 will die from the disease.

— City News Service