Long-term High Fat Ketogenic Diet Promotes Renal Tumor Growth in a Rat Model of Tuberous Sclerosis

What is it about?

In this investigation, we show for the first time that a high fat, low carbohydrate ketogenic diet promotes tumor growth in an animal model of spontaneously occurring renal cancer. The report combines some unique attitudes. We applied a modification of a commercially used high fat, ketogenic diet which allowed us to continue its usage for a prolonged time (8 months; before now, four month was the longest period of animal feeding by a ketogenic diet). Furthermore, we performed an analysis of particular proteins such as p53, ERK1/2 or OGG1 which were not previously evaluated in the context of a ketogenic diet. Likewise, we performed measurements of the metabolites (metabolomic profiling), which allowed us to gain a clear understanding of the proposed mechanisms. Finally, this paper answers several important questions about the ketogenic diet action and concludes that this may compromise its anticancer/pro-tumorigenic abilities.

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Why is it important?

Our results shed new light on many fields of nutrition and cancer research connected with the use of ketogenic diet as a form of therapy, because the diet is frequently considered as an anticancer agent. As a potential metabolic therapy it is often recalled in the context of cancer metabolism, a common subject of many current discussions.

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