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Acrylamide Study Suggests Breast Cancer Link 4-19-08
The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies acrylamide as a
probable human carcinogen. It has only been in recent months that an
epidemiologic study first found a link between dietary acrylamide and human
cancer risk. Now Danish researchers report that acrylamide adduct levels in
blood are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal
women.
The idea that hard water—particularly that with higher magnesium
concentrations—helps ward off cardiovascular problems has been around for 50
years. However, due to the ecologic nature of most studies, uncontrolled
confounding factors, and the different variables and outcomes measured, no firm
conclusions have ever been drawn. The WHO is therefore coordinating worldwide
efforts to compare cardiovascular morbidity before and after changes in the
calcium/magnesium content of water supplies.
This is the first epidemiologic study to use blood biomarkers to assess
acrylamide exposure. The findings, says first author Pelle Thonning Olesen,
emphasize the importance of using biomarkers for exposure assessment.
"Biomarkers are a more trustworthy indicator for exposure," he says.
Before 2002, people were known to be exposed to acrylamide in certain industries
and through smoking tobacco. That year, the Swedish National Food Administration
discovered that acrylamide also forms in fried or baked starchy foods such as
french fries, coffee, and baked goods. Diet is now thought to be the major
source of exposure among nonsmokers, but the cancer risk posed by acrylamide in
food is unknown.
All previous epidemiologic trials estimated acrylamide consumption from food
frequency questionnaires. Olesen, a toxicologist at the Technical University of
Denmark, Søborg, and colleagues instead measured levels of acrylamide and a key
metabolite, glycidamide, bound to hemoglobin. The subjects included 374
postmenopausal women with breast cancer and 374 controls who participated in the
Danish Cancer Society's Diet, Cancer, and Health Study.
Adduct levels of acrylamide among smokers reflect both dietary and smoking
intake of the compound. After statistical adjustments for smoking behavior,
women with the highest acrylamide-hemoglobin levels showed a 2.7 times higher
risk of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer compared with women with the
lowest acrylamide-hemoglobin levels. The risk rose with increasing acrylamide
exposure.
Acrylamide-hemoglobin levels were not linked to estrogen receptor–negative
breast cancer, and glycidamide-hemoglobin levels showed no connection with any
breast cancer. The finding that only acrylamide-hemoglobin was associated with
breast cancer suggests that the compound may induce cancer by nongenotoxic
routes such as alkylation of proteins that could alter estrogen receptor
function. The findings were reported in the 1 May 2008 issue of the
International Journal of Cancer.
"This is an important study because it's the first to measure acrylamide
adducts," says epidemiologist Lorelei Mucci, an assistant professor at the
Harvard School of Public Health. Nonetheless, the study should be repeated in
larger numbers of nonsmoking women, according to Mucci, because more than half
the cases and controls were current or former smokers.
"The big public health question here is whether the amount of acrylamide in
foods is enough to lead to cancer," Mucci says. It is possible that other
chemical compounds formed along with acrylamide may be the culprit in any cancer
link. "Acrylamide-hemoglobin may be a biomarker for other carcinogenic chemicals
formed during the heating of foods," cautions Olesen.