Diet patterns tied to breast, ovarian cancers

The findings, published in the International Journal of Cancer, add to questions surrounding the role of diet in women's risk of the cancers.

High alcohol intake has been consistently linked to breast cancer risk, but when it comes to other facets of the diet, studies have yielded conflicting results, according to the researchers on the current work, led by Dr Valeria Edefonti of the University of Milan.

Some studies, for example, have found that women who eat a lot of red and processed meat are more likely to develop breast cancer than other women; but other studies have found no such link. Saturated fat, found mainly in animal products, has been tied to higher breast cancer risk in some studies, but not in others.

While many of these studies have looked at single nutrients or food groups, another way to address the question is to look at dietary patterns - the combination of nutrients and foods that a person tends to favour health club.

For their study, Edefonti and her colleagues assessed dietary patterns among 3600 women with either breast or ovarian cancer, and 3413 healthy women of the same age.

Using detailed dietary questionnaires, the researchers identified four common dietary patterns in the study group: an "animal product" pattern, which was heavy in meat and saturated fat, but also zinc, calcium and certain other nutrients; a "vitamins and fibre" pattern, which besides fibre was rich in vitamin C, beta-carotene and other nutrients found in fruits and vegetables; an "unsaturated fat" pattern that contained high amounts of vegetable and fish oils, as well as vitamin E; and a "starch-rich" pattern high in simple carbohydrates, vegetable protein and sodium.

Overall, the study found, women who followed a pattern rich in vitamins and fibre had a 23 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer than women who consumed the lowest amounts of those foods and nutrients.

On the other hand, the animal-product pattern was linked to a similar reduction in breast cancer risk.

Women who followed health club the unsaturated-fat pattern had a slightly reduced risk of breast cancer, while the starch-rich diet was tied to elevated risks of both cancers.

It's not yet clear what to make of the findings, in part because they show associations between dietary patterns and canjavascript:void(0)
cer risk - and not that the foods directly affect cancer development.