Disease Proof

The New Scientist has word of a study suggesting mothers can reduce their daughters likelihood of developing breast cancer by getting lots of omega-3s during pregnancy and breast-feeding:

Elaine Hardman at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana looked at the effects of mothers' diets on mice predisposed to develop breast cancer. Female mice whose mothers ate a diet rich in omega-6 fatty acids and which ate the same diet themselves after weaning all developed tumours by six months. The diets of most people in western countries are much richer in omega-6 oils than omega-3s.

In mice whose mothers ate a diet richer in omega-3s, or mice fed this diet only after weaning, tumour rates fell to 60 per cent. In female mice fed the omega-3-rich diet and whose mothers ate it as well, the rate fell to just 13 per cent, Hardman told a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research this week.