Lifestyle correlates of eight breast cancer-related metabolites: a cross-sectional study within the EPIC cohort

Scientists from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), with collaborators from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort study, have linked blood compounds that have previously been associated with risk of breast cancer to the potentially modifiable lifestyle factors that give rise to them. The results are based on analyses of blood samples from more than 2300 women who did not have cancer. The study was published in the journal BMC Medicine.

A previous study examined concentrations of more than 120 blood metabolites and found that the concentrations of eight of these metabolites were associated with an increased risk of breast cancer development. In this new study, the researchers sought to understand the potential of these findings for cancer prevention by focusing on cancer-free participants only and linking concentrations of these blood metabolites to lifestyle habits and characteristics recorded at the time of blood collection.

This analysis identified several modifiable factors correlated to blood concentrations of metabolites associated with risk of breast cancer, such as alcohol consumption and adiposity. These associations may indicate possible mechanisms underlying associations between lifestyle factors and risk of breast cancer, although the direction and causality of these links are yet to be determined. More experimental research is also needed to triangulate these findings and understand causal pathways.

This work is an example of the application of metabolomics, an increasingly used approach in the context of cancer prevention research, by not only identifying markers related to cancer development but also linking them to potentially actionable factors.

His M, Viallon V, Dossus L, Schmidt JA, Travis RC, Gunter MJ, et al.
Lifestyle correlates of eight breast cancer-related metabolites: a cross-sectional study within the EPIC cohort
BMC Med, Published online 10 December 2021;
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-021-02183-2

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