BCG-modulated mammary carcinogenesis is dependent on the schedule of immunization but is not affected by dietary fat

The present study was designed to study the effect of dietary fat intake on the modulation of dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA)-induced mammary carcinogenesis in rats injected with the methanol extract residue of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (MER-BCG). Rats were maintained on either a 5% or a 20% corn oil diet for the entire duration of the experiment. When MER-BCG was administered 2 and 3 weeks before DMBA, mammary tumorigenesis was suppressed in the 2 dietary groups with different levels of fat intake. This was in contrast to when MER-BCG was administered 3 and 5 weeks after DMBA; in this case the development of mammary tumors was noticeably enhanced regardless of the fat intake of the host. The magnitude of inhibition or increase by MER-BCG was similar in animals fed either fat level, although a high fat diet consistently stimulated mammary tumorigenesis in the 2 experiments. In vitro assays on T cell mitogen-induced blastogenesis and natural killer cell activity in splenocytes isolated from the untreated rats showed that dietary fat failed to elicit any differential response in these immune functions.