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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Dietary habits are recognized to be an important factor influencing cancer risk and tumour behaviour. Diet can influence cancer development in several ways, as direct action of carcinogens in food can damage DNA, and some diet components (macro or micronutrients) can block or induce enzymes involved in activation or deactivation of carcinogenic substances. Moreover, inadequate intake of some molecules involved in DNA synthesis, repair or methylation can influence mutation rate or changes in the gene expression mechanism. From a mechanistic view of carcinogenesis, food mutagens are classified as genotoxic and non-genotoxic. Genotoxic agents cause DNA damage resulting in gene point mutations, deletions, and insertions, recombination, rearrangements, and amplifications, as well as chromosomal aberrations. Non-genotoxic agents are less distinctively defined in terms of their modes of action, but they are presumed to indirectly affect cell proliferation as tumours promoters, with or without accompanying chronic cell damage. Another mechanism that diet can influence DNA mutation, and consequently cancer risk, is energy balance and growth rates since nutrition will influence hormone levels and growth factors that will influence the rate of cell division, cell cycling and consequently influence time for DNA repair and/or replication of DNA lesions. Nutritional genomics studies the functional interaction of food and its components, macro and micronutrients, with genome at molecular, cellular, and systemic level. One of the goals is to identify biomarkers that will provide better guidance on the relationship between nutrition and health. Also relevant are the implications of genetic polymorphisms and their role in the interaction between diet, environmental factors, lifestyles, and cancer risk. The recognition of the importance of adequate dietary levels of micronutrients in maintaining genomic stability is very significant because the latter is also affected by inadequate nutrient intakes, such as lack of vitamins A, D, E, folate, selenium, and others.
Description
Keywords
Mutagens Carcinogenesis Genotoxic Antioxidants Human diet DNA Oncology
Citation
Ladeira C, Gomes MC, Brito M. Human nutrition, DNA damage and cancer: a review. In: Tomlekova NB, Kozgar MI, Wani MR, editors. Mutagenesis: exploring novel genes and pathways. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers; 2014. p. 73-104.