Bovine meat and milk protein in tumor‐free mucosa of colorectal cancer patients | Hacker News Reader

Bovine meat and milk protein in tumor‐free mucosa of colorectal cancer patients

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69 pointsdeneb8431 comments

Does this square epidemiologically with beef consumption? The countries with the highest beef consumption are in South America (and it's sharply more beef consumption); the countries with the highest colon cancer rates are in central and northern Europe.

It doesn't follow from a correlation that beef is by itself causative; it can be, for instance, beef plus some other X-factor. Somebody is going to point out that South American cattle are grass fed, but European cattle are also more grass fed than American cattle, and yet they still top the leaderboard.

Heavy use of antibiotics?

Edit: perhaps not

> It is estimated that livestock alone uses 50-80% of the total antibiotics produced in most of the developed countries. China, Brazil, and the United States are the largest consumers of antimicrobials in livestock production.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7896880/ (Antimicrobial uses for livestock production in developing countries)

An alternative approach would be to sequence the DNA of those who have had this cancer to see if they have a predisposition to this cancer on certain diets due to a specific set of genes.

Beef without fibre?

Lack of fiber is already a known factor in colorectal cancer, isn't it?

Is it? I heard that was pop science.

No that's poop science! On a serious note though, seems still undecided but leaning more heavily towards no protective effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6357054/

Less other causes of death might mean more colorectal cancer as you age. Also age distribution is different (skews way younger in South America for not just longevity reasons) so you need to adjust for that.

Could there be a significant difference in soil composition between South America and Europe, leading to different health outcomes? If you travel through Europe and South America at similar +/- latitudes, the countryside is completely different. Similarly US vs Europe at the same latitude.

It would be helpful to look at import/export flows. I suspect that quite a large percentage of European beef consumption isn't locally sourced, with likely quite a bit coming from S. America.

If you know specific countries or trade blocs, you can look it up here.

https://oec.world/en/profile/international_organization/euro...

Are these numbers corrected for testing bias?

Well, the study was not an RCT, so the authors by necessity argue for the presence of an association, but are technically not claiming a casual relationship (even if the wording does a heavy 'wink wink' at the reader). That, and apparently the findings were not statistically significant.

However, even if there is an association, and it is "causal", given this is not an experimental study, the relationship could well indicate a reverse causal link.

E.g., patients with a higher likelihood of developing colorectal carcinoma may be predisposed to increasing their beef / milk consumption, which then shows in non-tumour tissues. In this light, the association might even demonstrate a protective effect against cancer (or at least its early symptoms).

One can easily find a biologically plausible explanation for this too. One of the early signs of cancer is loss of weight / appetite. It would make sense that people might instinctively turn to more 'umami/flavourful', low-carb/protein-high diets, to stimulate their appetite and combat the weight loss; particularly in terms of muscle mass.

This kind of explanation might also align with your observation on cancer rates in Europe vs South America. (assuming detection rates are similar in the first place).

I think a meaningful question to ask is what other foods are also packaged in plastic or plasticized-paper that require anoxic environments for food safety purposes? These will be raw animal products like seafood, poultry, cheese, or ready-to-eat cooked-in-plastic meals.

We already have at least one study that points towards ultraprocessed food consumption as increasing the risk of specifically ovarian cancer by 30%. I wouldn't be surprised to find colorectal cancer rates similarly increased with their consumption.

It'd be interesting to see a metastudy on whether dietary-associated cancers, endocrine disruption, and lower testosterone are correlated with industrial single-plastic packaging for majority-consumed foodstuffs.

My guess is, assuming to genetic predisposition, colorectal cancer is far more tied to diet than plastic (which is likely non-region specific). Things like complex fiber, the right micro biome, etc.

"What makes the increase particularly mysterious is the fact that the overall incidence of colorectal cancer has dropped by 45% since the mid-1980s. While the cancer is still most frequently diagnosed in people over 55, the study found that patients younger than 55 were 58% more likely to be diagnosed with advanced disease."

If the cause were beef and milk consumption as such, it seems unlikely that a severe shift like this would occur. To me, it's far more likely to be something like crop dessication for grains--they started soaking cereal crops in glyphosate prior to harvest and suddenly this category of food that sustained the planet for millennia suddenly starts causing broad spectrum inflammation that people blame on the crop and not the processes and adjuncts.

I smell a Bayer, Nestlé, DuPont, J&J, Pfizer, Monsanto, etc-style hidden externality at work rather than animal husbandry. Like, what are the colorectal cancer rates for those people that actively practice transhumance? Do they differ significantly despite predominantly animal-product and dairy-based diets?

Many things have happened since the 80s; obesity as also shot up. In general people eat out more, eat fast food, and more simple carbohydrates. I think it would be hard to pin this one on any particular one thing. I

It’s also possible it isn’t one thing, but a confluence of factors.

This is the WORST summary title of a post I’ve ever seen. The wording implies actually the opposite of the article; it implies to those without deep knowledge of the topic that bovine and milk proteins are associated with remission. The full title of the research states that those things interfere with patient survival. Instead, reading only the title first, I think “oh, tumor-free! Great!”

> BMMFs have been proposed as zoonotic infectious agents and drivers of indirect carcinogenesis of CRC, inducing chronic tissue inflammation, radical formation and increased levels of DNA damage.

There's also a strong relationship between BMMFs and Osteoporosis, which also is linked with hearing loss.

"Bovine meat and milk factors (BMMFs) are episomal, plasmid-like DNA molecules isolated from bovine sera and milk products and from the peritumor of colorectal cancer CRC patients [[1-6]]. BMMFs were proposed as zoonotic infectious agents and risk factors involved in indirect cancerogenesis of several types of cancer including CRC [[7-10]]. Our studies specifically focus on a link between BMMF and colorectal cancer and are supported by an epidemiological association between global consumption of bovine (red) meat and dairy products and colorectal cancer incidence"

It’s fiber. High red meat no fiber bad news. Brazil eats tons of steak but also tons of beans and plantains.

could someone please ELI5? lots of conflicting terms here and i’m not sure what to take away.

There is the same molecule, found in bovine milk/meat and in the mucosa of colon cancer patients. The study aims to find the correlation between these molecules and colon cancer in humans. The authors suggested there is a causal link between consumption of bovine products and colon cancer but other studies are not conclusive about these matters.

thank you, very helpful!

From an uninformed intuitive perspective, it would make sense that a substance developed to provide nutrients to rapidly growing babies could cause abnormal growth (tumors) in mature individuals. Same logic applies to artificial growth hormones, which are applied to livestock.

So if I understand right, we know that those with colorectal cancer have suspiciously correlated proteins, which could be used for a better screen for this cancer.

But do we know that consuming cow always causes this cancer?

If not, what's next?

Yes, we know at this time that consuming cow does not always cause colorectal cancer.

Weird not to see HPV even mentioned anywhere as one of the CRC risks they accounted for.

wow...this can def. explain the uptick in colon cancer, especially in young people.

Well it looks a bit weird to me. Maybe due to increased consumption of beef, surely, but not sure if milk consumption has gone up

Though I'm very surprised at the mechanism, that was totally news to me

While late diagnosis of Stage III/IV CRC in young adults is tragic, both incidence and death rate of colon cancer has fallen in recent years in the U.S. as early detection (more colonoscopies) and proactive removal of pre-cancerous polyps has increased.

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