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Calcium
may only protect against Colorectal Cancer
in presence of Magnesium
Newswise — According to data presented at
the Seventh Annual American Association for
Cancer Research International Conference on
Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, an
understanding of the relationship between
calcium and magnesium may lead to new
avenues of personalized prevention for
colorectal cancer.
High magnesium intake has been associated
with low risk of colorectal cancer.
Americans have similar average magnesium
intake as East Asian populations.
If that were all that were involved,
observers might expect both groups to have
similar risk for colorectal cancer.
However, the United States has seen a much
higher colorectal cancer incidence rate than
East Asian populations.
Furthermore, when East Asians immigrated to
the United States, their incidence rates for
colorectal cancer increased. T
his led researchers at Vanderbilt University
to suspect there was something else at work.
Calcium supplementation has been shown to
inhibit colorectal carcinogenesis although
high calcium may simultaneously be
preventing the body from absorbing
magnesium.
United States patients have a higher calcium
intake and higher colorectal cancer
incidence.
“If calcium levels were involved alone,
you'd expect the opposite direction. There
may be something about these two factors
combined – the ratio of one to the other –
that might be at play”, said Qi Dai, M.D.,
Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at
Vanderbilt University.
Dai and colleagues examined this hypothesis
in a large clinical trial and found indeed
that supplementation of calcium only reduced
the risk of adenoma recurrence if the ratio
of calcium to magnesium was low and remained
low during treatment.
“The risk of colorectal cancer adenoma
recurrence was reduced by 32 percent among
those with baseline calcium to magnesium
ratio below the median in comparison to no
reduction for those above the median,” said
Qi.
The implications for prevention of adenoma
recurrence or reduced risk of primary
colorectal cancer is that designing a
personalized diet/supplementation regimen
that takes the ratio of both nutrients into
account may be better than supplementing
with one or the other alone.
About one in eighteen individuals will
develop colorectal cancer in their lifetime
and 40 percent will die within five years of
diagnosis, mainly due to diagnosis at a late
stage.
The understanding of how dietary factors
affect colorectal cancer may lead to the
prevention of cancer recurrence and possibly
prevention of the initial cancer.
The mission of the American Association for
Cancer Research is to prevent and cure
cancer.
Founded
in 1907, AACR is the world’s oldest and
largest professional organization dedicated
to advancing cancer research.
The membership includes more than 28,000
basic, translational and clinical
researchers; health care professionals; and
cancer survivors and advocates in the United
States and 80 other countries.
The AACR marshals the full spectrum of
expertise from the cancer community to
accelerate progress in the prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of cancer through
high-quality scientific and educational
programs. It funds innovative, meritorious
research grants.
The AACR Annual Meeting attracts more than
17,000 participants who share the latest
discoveries and developments in the field.
Special conferences throughout the year
present novel data across a wide variety of
topics in cancer research, treatment and
patient care.
The AACR publishes five major peer-reviewed
journals: Cancer Research; Clinical Cancer
Research; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics;
Molecular Cancer Research; and Cancer
Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
The AACR’s most recent publication and its
sixth major journal, Cancer Prevention
Research, is dedicated exclusively to cancer
prevention, from preclinical research to
clinical trials.
The AACR also publishes CR, a magazine for
cancer survivors and their families, patient
advocates, physicians and scientists. CR
provides a forum for sharing essential,
evidence-based information and perspectives
on progress in cancer research, survivorship
and advocacy.
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