Scientists find a soup of suspects while probing milk’s link to cancer
Latest studies focus on estrogens, androgens and IGF-1
By Janet Raloff
Got milk? Adults who answer yes may face a slightly heightened risk of cancer. Some emerging data may help scientists figure out why.
For more than a century, people thought that any beverage safe enough to serve to a weaning child couldn’t hurt an adult. But test-tube studies and studies in adults over the past decade have linked cow’s milk with an excess cancer risk in the prostate, and to a lesser extent in the breast and ovaries, notes oncologist Michael Pollak of McGill University in Montreal. Although scientists seeking to explain the link have fingered some suspects—such as milk’s natural stew of hormones, growth factors and other biologically active chemicals—there’s no “smoking gun,” he says.
But a new study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, in Maryland, offers some ammunition.