A study conducted by a team of Spanish experts has demonstrated how palmitic acid produces a series of changes in tumor cells, which have a greater metastatic capacity.
A team of scientists from the Institute for Biomedical Research (IRB) in Barcelona, Spain, has discovered how a diet rich in palmitic acid, one of the fatty acids in palm oil, promotes the growth of tumor cells and increases the spread of metastasis. I study, published this Wednesday in the scientific journal Naturewas conducted on mice, and showed that palmitic acid produces a series of changes in tumor cells, who gain greater metastatic capacity even months after exposure, a phenomenon described by scientists as a “memory factor”.
Health: palm oil makes tumors more aggressive
On the other hand, specialists have observed that the cancer cells they became more aggressive even if exposure to this fatty acid occurred during an early stage of the disease. On the contrary, the consumption of oleic acid or linoleic acid present respectively in olive oil and flax seeds, has no produced the same negative effect on cells. Therefore, according to the researchers, the increased aggressiveness of tumor cells is due to the epigenetic modifications that occur due to the consumption of palmitic acid. “This discovery opens new avenues for research and development of therapies aimed specifically at preventing cancer metastasis, which is almost always the cause of mortality“, said Gloria Pascual, one of the authors of the study.