A new study conducted by a team of researchers from the Nutrition and Cancer Unit of the Catalan Institute of Oncology and IDIBELL, with the collaboration of the scientific and technological centre AZTI, offers a relevant review and update of data showing that dietary habits and gut microbiota play a key role in cancer prevention.
Olive oil is one of the most relevant elements of the Mediterranean diet. Moreover, both the Mediterranean diet and olive oil are rich in compounds that are beneficial to health and there is growing evidence that they could improve health factors related to obesity. However, the relationship between the Mediterranean diet, olive oil, obesity-related cancers and the role of the microbiota has not been clearly studied.
A new study published in the scientific journal ‘Seminars in Cancer Biology’ by a team of researchers from the Nutrition and Cancer Unit of the Catalan Institute of Oncology and IDIBELL, in collaboration with the Food and Health team of the Basque scientific and technological centre AZTI, offers a relevant review and update of evidence showing that eating habits play a key role in cancer prevention, and the relationship between obesity and the risk of having different types of cancer such as endometrial, oesophageal, renal, colorectal, pancreatic and liver cancer, among others.
The Mediterranean diet and olive oil: tools for preventing cancer
This study has examined the epidemiological evidence linking the Mediterranean diet and olive oil to obesity-related cancers, as well as the biological and gut microbiota mechanisms that may explain this connection. The results suggest that adherence to these dietary habits has a positive impact on the prevention of aerodigestive, gastrointestinal, and gynaecological cancers.
In fact, it has been observed that in some cancers, especially gastrointestinal cancers, an imbalance in the intestinal microbiota is present, which leads to inflammation and an altered production of metabolites that can contribute to an acceleration of the carcinogenesis process. For Marta Farràs, researcher at the Catalan Institute of Oncology and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute and lead author of the study, “both in vitro and clinical studies show that the Mediterranean diet and olive oil can modify the composition of the intestinal microbiota and its mechanisms and, therefore, modulation of this through diet could play an important role in the prevention and treatment of obesity-related cancers”. The researcher Ainara Cano, co-author of the review, gives her view on the applications that are already being implemented at AZTI “the modulation of the microbiota through probiotics and prebiotics (foods that are beneficial for our microbiota) is already a reality that plays a role in the prevention and treatment of obesity-related cancers and other pathologies”.
The full article is available through this link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044579X23001116?via%3Dihub
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