Editor’s note: Acrylamide is found high in fries and baked foods. The cancer causing agent is formed during thermal processing due to the presence of an amino acid called asparagine which reacts with glucose to form the chemical.
Dietary intake of acrylamide and endometrial cancer risk in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort.
M Obón-Santacana of Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO-IDIBELL) in Barcelona, Spain and colleagues conducted a study and found that intake of acrylamide was linked to elevated risk for type-1 endometrial cancer.
The study published in 2014 in British Journal of Cancer indicated that women who had highest intake of acrylamide were twice as likely as those who had lower intake to get endometrial cancer.
The study did not find any positive association between intake of acrylamide and overall risk for endometrial cancer.
Acrylamide is a cancer causing agent that is commonly found in fries and many other baked products. Acrylamide was recognized as “probably carcinogenic to humans (group 2A)” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. But how dietary intake of this toxic chemical affects the risk of endometrial cancer and other cancers remains largely unknown.
The study was based on the data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort.
Br J Cancer. 2014 Aug 26; 111(5): 987–997.
Published online 2014 Jun 17. doi: 10.1038/bjc.2014.328
The same group of researchers published another study in 2016 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention suggests that high intake of acrylamide can increase epithelial ovarian cancer.
The study analyzed data from five epidemiological studies and found that acrylamide biomarkers were associated with epithelial ovarian cancer risk. It found that high levels of acrylamide biomarkers were linked to 81% increased risk for the cancer.
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 25(1); 127–34. ©2015 AACR.
Another study led by Claudio Pelucchi from Department of Epidemiology, IRCCS—Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Milan, Italy and colleagues found an association between intake of acrylamide and kidney cancer risk.
The authors analyzed data from 32 reports and found intake of acrylamide was linked to elevated risk not only for ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer, but also for kidney cancer. The study showed that those with high intake of acrylamide were 20% higher risk for kidney cancer.
The study was published in international Journal of Cancer.
International Journal of Cancer, Volume 136, Issue 12, 15 June 2015, Pages 2912–2922
