Having a fatty diet would prevent the body from detecting when a tumor is at risk of forming and would confuse the tracks, explains a published study. in the magazine Cell Stem Cell.
It was a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge who made this discovery. Researchers analyzed two groups of mice, one of which had a fatty diet and the other not. They studied their microbiota and their immune system and forged a link between the two to explain the occurrence of cancers.
When a tumor develops, it is because a cell loses its ability to function. Normally, the immune system takes over: the cell carries a marker (MHC-II) which tells the immune system that it must destroy it. In other words, the abnormal cell alerts that it is in trouble. This prevents a cluster of failing cells from forming which would cause a tumour.
An immune system blinded by fat
This marker is automatic, but scientists have found that it may not work when you eat too much fat. Indeed, the group of mice with this diet showed an extremely low level of MHC-II, compared to the mice with a normal diet.
This suggests that this type of diet would prevent cells from presenting the essential marker to prevent cancer, and would in fact inhibit the action of the immune system responsible for preventing tumor formation. In other words, eating fat would make the immune system “blind” to the dysfunction of its cells and therefore unable to prevent the appearance of cancer.
Source: Dietary suppression of MHC class II expression in intestinal epithelial cells enhances intestinal tumorigenesis, Cell Stem Cell, November 4, 2021.
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