Annie N Samraj, Oliver M T Pearce, Heinz Läubli, Alyssa N Crittenden, Anne K Bergfeld, Kalyan Banda, Christopher J Gregg, Andrea E Bingman, Patrick Secrest, Sandra L Diaz, Nissi M Varki, Ajit Varki
A well known, epidemiologically reproducible risk factor for human carcinomas is the long-term consumption of "red meat" of mammalian origin. Although multiple theories have attempted to explain this human-specific association, none have been conclusively proven. We used an improved method to survey common foods for free and glycosidically bound forms of the nonhuman sialic acid N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), showing that it is highly and selectively enriched in red meat. The bound form of Neu5Gc is bioavailable, undergoing metabolic incorporation into human tissues, despite being a foreign antigen...
January 13, 2015: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America