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Cambridge/Stockholm (pte024/16.03.2005/12:00) - Acrylamide, a chemical found in baked and fried foods, does not increase the risk of developing breast cancer as had previously been thought, scientists say. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health http://www.hsph.harvard.edu and the Karolinska Institute http://www.ki.se found that women who ate more foods containing the chemical were at no higher risk. The chemical is found in foods such as chips, crisps and coffee. The study of 43,000 women is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Acrylamide was first discovered in common foods in 2002. The World Health Organisation has said that laboratory experiments suggest it is carcinogenic, or cancer causing. It appears to form as a result of a reaction between specific amino acids and sugars found in foods when heated to high temperatures. Tests exposing rats to acrylamide have resulted in large mammary gland tumours forming. But the animals were exposed to levels of the chemical 1,000 to 1000,000 times greater than levels humans are exposed to through diet. The US and Swedish researchers set out to discover if the amount of the chemical which would be ingested as part of an ordinary human diet posed a cancer risk.
The women the researchers studied were part of the Swedish Women's Lifestyle and Health Cohort. They were first assessed in 1991, when they were asked about their diets and how much of acrylamide-containing foods they ate. The researchers then used data on these foods to determine exactly how much acrylamide the women were eating. The women were then reassessed in 2002, when the scientists found that 667 of them had developed breast cancer. It was found that the women who had the lowest daily acrylamide intake had no higher breast cancer risk than those whose intake was higher. In addition, there was no increased risk of breast cancer among women who ate a higher quantity of specific foods known to contain acrylamide. The average daily acrylamide intake among the participants was 25.9 micrograms (mcgs) per day. The foods that contributed the most to the chemical intake were coffee (54 per cent), fried potatoes (12 per cent) and crisp bread (9 per cent).
"We found no evidence of an association between the amount of acrylamide consumed by these Swedish women and risk of breast cancer," said the researchers. "It's reassuring to see that the study suggests that the amount of acrylamide consumed in the Swedish diet is not associated with an excess risk of breast cancer," said Lorelei Mucci, from the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study. "Given the widespread public health implications of acrylamide, however, it is important to examine the risk associated with other cancers as well as neurological conditions," he added.
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