🍭New Data on How
#Fructose Fuels
#Cancer🍭
A study published in
@Nature revealed how fructose, after fluxing through the liver, ultimately supports the production of building blocks for multiple tumors.
In several of the experiments, they used high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) because it’s the most abundant and dense source of fructose in the modern human diet.
📈Results📈
“In all cases, diets supplemented with HFCS resulted in faster tumor growth compared with control diets.”
This included skin, breast and cervical cancers in animal models and across species.
And, importantly, they write, “we found that fructose promoted tumor growth without changing body weight.”
So, this isn’t simply an indirect effect of fructose from the slow insidious creeping negative effect it has on metabolic health. No, what’s going on here is a direct effect of fructose consumption on cancer growth… sort of.
🔧Mechanism 🔧
The mechanism they discover is quite interesting and relies on the gatekeeper enzyme of fructose metabolism, ketohexokinase (KHK).
Interestingly, cancer cells themselves lack sufficient levels of KHK to process fructose.
However, cancer is very good at co-opting the body’s systems and organs for its own purposes.
👉In this case, the liver, when supplied with fructose, produces particular lipid molecules that go to the cancer cells and are converted to other lipid molecules called “phosphatidylcholines,” a major component of cell membranes.
This is very useful for the cancer since – in effect – fructose is supplying a major building block required for tumor growth.
Ref. Nature Dec 4, 2024. PMID: 39633044
