Eating eggs while pregnant can protect the mom’s offspring from cancer. Researchers reported in the journal of the “Federation of American Society for Experimental Biology” (FASEB) that eating choline—a nutrient abundant in eggs—during pregnancy lowered the risk of breast cancer in the mother’s offspring.
The team of biologists from Boston University was the first to link choline with the prevention of breast cancer and the first to identify changes in genes related to choline.
Researchers made their discovery by studying female rats whose mothers were fed extra choline, standard amounts of choline or no choline at all during pregnancy. They then treated all rats with a chemical that causes breast cancer. All of the rats developed breast cancer, but the daughters whose mothers had received extra choline during pregnancy had slow-growing tumors while the tumors of daughters whose moms had no choline grew rapidly.
The researchers also found several genetic and molecular changes in the tumors. The rats with slow-growing tumors had genetic patterns that, in humans, indicate a positive prognosis. But the genetic changes in the tumors of rats whose mothers had no choline in their diets, indicated more aggressive disease.
“We have known for a long time that some agents taken by pregnant women, such as diethylstibesterol, have adverse consequences for the daughters,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-chief of the FASEB journal. “But there’s an upside. For the first time, we’ve learned that we might be able to prevent breast cancer as early as a mother’s pregnancy.”
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