Malnutrition, liver damage, and cancer.

There is no clear indication that malnutrition, per se, is a principal cause of cancer in man, but the prevalence of liver cancer in areas where malnutrition exists supports this hypothesis. Liver damage and liver cancer have been induced in laboratory rats by diets consisting of peanut meal and proteins deficient in some essential amino acids. However, liver damage, but not cancer, was produced when the diets contained no peanut meal but consisted of a mixture of amino acids deficient in methionine and cysteine, so that it is possible that aflatoxin, a contaminant of peanut meal, may have been responsible for the malignancies seen in the earlier experiments. Liver cancer developes in a high proportion of mice allowed to feed ad libitum or given a diet containing a high proportion of fat (groundnut oil) or protein (casein). Dietary restriction reduced the incidences of this cancer. This findings lends some support to current thinking that diet may be a factor in the development of cancer in man.