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Wish List

Today we have some cautiously optimistic news about a carcinogen that millions of people pick up in their diets every day.

Remember acrylamide? More than five years ago, Swedish researchers made headlines with a warning that this dangerous compound (most often associated with plastic manufacturing) is created when carbohydrate foods are cooked at high temperatures.

This alarming study was quickly followed up with similar studies in Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – all of them drawing virtually the same conclusion: Acrylamide, which is known to cause tumors in laboratory animals, is in many prepared foods that our society wolfs down in abundance. French fries, snack chips, crackers, pastries, and powdered coffee all contain acrylamide. Do you enjoy baking a loaf of fresh whole wheat bread? Even that contains acrylamide.

So this good news about acrylamide is welcome. But by no means are we out of the woods quite yet.

Blind spot

In the e-Alert “Cooking Up Trouble” (4/13/04), I told you about additional Swedish research that showed no association between acrylamide intake and three types of cancer: colon, rectum and breast. But these studies are not conclusive because you can’t mount a placebo-controlled trial in which half the group receives food loaded with a carcinogen, and half receive carcinogen-free food. There’s that little ethics problem with knowing you might be harming human subjects.

So to get at least some kind of handle on how acrylamide might do harm in the human body, you do what a team of researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health recently did: Examine 20 years of dietary and medical data collected from the Nurses Health Study. Analysis showed no significant difference between breast cancer rates in women with high intake of acrylamide compared to women with low intake.

But what’s the common denominator here? Apparently ALL the women had some level of acrylamide intake. No surprise – the average person eats several servings of bread and other acrylamide foods each week. So here’s the blind spot of this study: Maybe only a small acrylamide intake causes breast cancer, while a higher acrylamide intake does not cause a higher rate of breast cancer.

As one news outlet put it: “Acrylamidedoes not seem to cause breast cancer.” Right now, that’s the best result researchers can deliver. They don’t know for sure, they can only tell you what it seems to be.

Not quite right

The Brigham and Women’s/Harvard team has already started work on a study to compare acrylamide intake to rates of prostate cancer, with studies of ovarian and endometrial cancers to come. These studies also have the built-in blind spot, but one of them might produce a dramatic result. You never know. And we need to know. So the studies should continue. But here’s the study I want to see: A breast cancer/acrylamide study in which the subjects have BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are acronyms for “breast cancer 1” and “breast cancer 2,” which are genes that are known to protect against breast cancer. In the e-Alert “All in the Family” (6/5/07), I told you about research that shows how women with mutations of BRCA1 and 2 are at considerably higher risk of breast cancer compared to women who have no variation in these genes.

Sowhat effect does acrylamide have on women whose natural protection against breast cancer is genetically compromised? Is it possible that acrylamide intake dramatically increases their risk?

That’s the study I want to see.

I’ll be following the progress of the Brigham and Women’s/Harvard research and other acrylamide research that’s going on out there.

But in spite of the promising results so far, you still won’t catch me gulping down French fries at Mickey D’s – and not just because I’m afraid I might get caught.

Sources:
“Acrylamide And Breast Cancer Link Disputed” WebMD, 8/21/07, cbsnews.com