Avoid junk food during pregnancy!

In their rat-based study, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center showed that pregnant females that ate a high fat diet not only increased breast cancer risk in their female daughters but also in that daughter's offspring – the "granddaughters."

The researchers say they don’t know why this risk is passed on through two generations, but they believe it occurs through as-yet unknown "epigenetic" changes that result in an increase in terminal end buds in the breast tissue – an increase that apparently can then be passed on through generations.

These buds are believed to be the structures where breast cancer can develop, and having more of these structures seems to increase breast cancer risk, says the study’s lead investigator, Sonia de Assis, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Leena Hilakivi-Clarke’s laboratory at Lombardi. "That is our theory, but we really don’t know how it is happening – just yet."

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