Fatty acid composition of phospholipids and neutral lipids and lipid peroxidation in human breast cancer and lipoma tissue

Since unsaturated fatty acids have been shown to control cell division experimentally the fatty acid composition in human mammary cancers as compared with the healthy surrounding tissue was studied. Both phospholipid and neutral lipid fractions were extracted for study and further lipid per-oxidation expressed as thiobarbituric add reactive substances was measured. For a comparison a benign adipose tissue tumor, lipoma, was studied. There was a 3.6-fold increase in phospholipid contents of cancer as compared with a reference tissue. No such differences were observed between lipoma and surrounding adipose tissue. In the phospholipid fatty acids of mammary cancers there was a marked increase in the relative amounts of unsaturated fatty acids, especially arachidonic acid, while saturated fatty acids were decreased, as compared with a healthy reference breast tissue or lipomas. The data suggest that the fatty acids might have a role in the development of breast cancer, possibly related to the formation of reactive metabolites of unsaturated fatty acids in the initiation of cancer or to their promotional effects.