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The Center for American Progress reports:
African Americans, a group plagued by significantly high rates of obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and other physical ailments. A recent study suggests the answer may lie in the diets of their counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean in the rural parts of the Motherland.
In a study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, 20 African Americans and 20 South Africans switched diets for two weeks. In this time, the Africans consumed traditional American food--meat and cheese high in fat content--while African Americans took on a traditional African diet--high in fiber and low in fat, with plenty of vegetables, beans, and cornmeal, with little meat.
After the exchange, researchers performed colonoscopies on both groups and found that those in the African diet group increased the production of butyrate, a fatty acid proven to protect against colon cancer. Members of the American diet group, on the other hand, developed changes in their gut that scientists say precede the development of cancerous cells.
[...]"we used biomarkers and looked at the proliferation rate that has been tied to cancer," Dr. Stephen J. O'Keefe, the lead researcher, told ThinkProgress. "We were astounded by the gravity and the magnitude of the changes [which] happened within two weeks."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:41PM
I'm not sure you read the article that carefully. This is shown in Figure 1a and Supplementary Figure 2. They stain for Ki67 which is supposedly a marker for cell proliferation (I don't claim otherwise, just never looked into it). These are actually really interesting results. 1) The stain levels were very similar when Americans and Africans were on their usual diets. 2) When Americans switched to "African diets" the levels decreased 3) When Africans switched to "American diets" the levels increased.
What is it that you were looking for? Also this line from the paper is pretty funny:
They are just obsessed with the damn carcinogen and point mutation idea. There is no need for that, the carcinogen idea is only necessary because the normal point mutation rate is so low (usually estimated as ~10^-7 per gene per division). In contrast, the rate of chromosomal missegregation appears to be about 1 every 100 divisions for normal cells[1], and messed up chromosomes are "observed in virtually all cancers".[2] From that we would guess that anything that increases the need for cell division causes cancer. Sure enough pretty much everything is linked to cancer. The best way (considering cost-benefit) to prevent cancer is probably caloric restriction.. That is probably why anorexics get less cancer and a major reason chemo seems to work.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18283116 [nih.gov]
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15549096 [nih.gov]