MIT researchers found more tumors in mice on a keto diet — ScienceDaily

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that a ketogenic diet increased the incidence of small intestinal tumors in mice genetically predisposed to developing intestinal cancer. At the same time, this diet suppressed tumor formation in the large intestine, ScienceDaily reports. The study results were published in the journal Nature.

Three types of diet were compared

A ketogenic diet is high in fats and very low in carbohydrates. With this type of diet, the body uses less glucose as an energy source and burns fatty acids more actively. In the experiment, mice were given a ketogenic diet, a control diet, or a high-calorie diet high in fat.

Small intestinal tumors occurred more frequently in animals on the keto diet than in the control group. Although these mice did not gain weight to the level of obesity, their tumor incidence was similar to, and in some cases higher than, that of animals on the high-calorie fatty diet.

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The role of fat metabolism

Additional experiments did not show that ketone bodies, including β-hydroxybutyrate, by themselves caused accelerated tumor growth. The researchers linked the effect to fatty acid oxidation, a process in which intestinal cells obtain energy from dietary fat.

Activation of this process switched on proteins of the PPAR family, which stimulated faster division of intestinal stem cells. Such activity may help the intestinal lining recover after damage, but excessive cell division also creates more opportunities for malignant changes.

The authors plan to determine why the same diet produces opposite results in two adjacent sections of the intestine. They also noted that ketone supplements or drinks should not reproduce the observed effects, since the changes were linked specifically to fat metabolism.