STUDY: Meat-eating mammals are more susceptible to cancer than herbivores
The findings challenge the common belief that bigger animals with longer lifespans are most at risk of getting cancer. Instead, cancer risk appears to be heavily influenced by diet.
ALICE KLEIN: Mammals that live on meat are more likely to die of cancer than those that only eat plants, according to a study of tens of thousands of zoo animals from around the world. Orsolya Vincze at the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary and her colleagues analysed post-mortem records for 110,148 animals from 191 mammal species that died in zoos to determine their risk of dying from cancer.
They found that carnivorous mammals were much more likely to die of cancer than mammals that rarely or never eat animals. The artiodactyls, a mostly herbivorous group that includes antelopes, sheep and cows, was the least cancer-prone order of mammals…
The findings challenge the common belief that bigger animals with longer lifespans are most at risk of getting cancer, since they have more cells that can mutate and there is more time for mutations to occur. Instead, cancer risk appears to be heavily influenced by diet, although more research is needed to confirm whether the relationship seen in captive mammals is also found in wild populations, say the researchers.
One reason why carnivores may be more prone to cancer is that raw meat can contain viruses that have the potential to cause cancer when ingested, says Vincze. For example, cancers in some captive lions have been found to be related to papillomavirus in cow carcasses they ate, she says.
Another reason may be that carnivores are more exposed to pollutants that become increasingly concentrated in animals further up the food chain, says Beata Ujvari at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, who was also involved in the study. Moreover, carnivores have high-fat, low-fibre diets and less diverse gut bacteria than plant-eaters, which are factors that have been associated with cancer risk in people, she says.
The finding that meat-eating mammals are more susceptible to cancer doesn’t necessarily mean that people who eat meat are also more at risk, since we have different lifestyles to other mammals and don’t tend to eat raw meat, says Ujvari. However, some human studies have linked meat consumption with increased cancer risk, she says. SOURCE…
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