14 DAY TRIAL // Information shared with the public by the National Cancer Institute in the United States says that, presently, some 15% of the men living in this country end up being diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives.
According to a recent paper, exposure to canned foods and drinks while the child is still in the womb could partly explain why this is the case, Eco Watch reports.
Thus, specialists argue that, according to their investigations into the matter at hand, a chemical compound that is present in the material that food and beverage cans are made from might make men more vulnerable to said medical condition.
The chemical compound in question is known to the scientific community as bisphenol A, and has been documented by several previous studies to be an endocrine disrupter that works as an estrogen.
Apart from the fact that it is present in food and beverage cans, bisphenol A can also be found in dental sealants and even paper receipts.
In fact, it is so widespread that about 90% of the people living in the United States have been documented to carry traces of it in their bodies.
In order to investigate how this chemical compound affects human health, researchers with the University of Illinois at Chicago carried out a series of experiments on mice.
More precisely, they injected several such rodents with stem cells collected from deceased young men.
Of the mice that were used in these experiments, some were fed bisphenol A by mouth on a regular basis during their first two weeks of life.
In later life, the mice had their overall health condition assessed, and it was determined that 33% of the stem cells transplanted in their bodies had developed cancerous or precancerous lesions.
Of the stem cells exposed to said chemical compound both before and after implantation, as many as 45% showed signs of cancerous or precancerous lesions at the time when the researchers checked up on them.
By comparison, just stem cells that did experience any kind of exposure to bisphenol A ended up displaying said kind of lesions.
In light of these findings, the University of Illinois at Chicago researchers theorize that, if exposed to bisphenol A while still in the womb, a fetus' stem cells are reprogrammed.
Specifically, they become highly sensitive to estrogen and pass on this sensitivity to the prostate tissue that they eventually come to form.
As a man ages, his levels of estrogen up, and the tissues whose normal workings bisphenol A toyed with are more likely to become cancerous ones.
Specialist Heather Patisaul with the University of North Carolina says that, although this series of experiments was carried out on mice, its findings are, “some of the strongest and most convincing evidence to date linking early life BPA exposure and cancer.”