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Thursday March 28, 2024

Researchers find biological links between red meat and colorectal cancer

By AFP
June 20, 2021

WASHINGTON: Eating less red meat is standard medical advice for preventing colorectal cancer, but the way it causes cells to mutate has remained unclear, and not all experts were convinced there was a strong link.

A new paper in the journal Cancer Discovery has now identified specific patterns of DNA damage triggered by diets rich in red meat -- further implicating the food as a carcinogen while heralding the possibility of detecting the cancer early and designing new treatments.

Prior research establishing the connection was mainly epidemiologic, meaning that people who developed the condition were surveyed on their eating habits, and researchers spotted associations with colorectal cancer incidence.