Dietary patterns and risk of breast cancer

Background: Evidence is emerging that prudent/healthy dietary patterns might be associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer. Methods: Using data from the prospective Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, we applied principal factor analysis to 124 foods and beverages to identify dietary patterns and estimated their association with breast cancer risk overall and by tumour characteristics using Cox regression. Results: During an average of 14.1 years of follow-up of 20 967 women participants, 815 invasive breast cancers were diagnosed. Among the four dietary factors that we identified, only that characterised by high consumption of fruit and salad was associated with a reduced risk, with stronger associations observed for tumours not expressing oestrogen (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR). Compared with women in the lowest quintile of the factor score, the hazard ratio for women in the highest quintile was 0.92 (95% confidence interval (CI)=0.70-1.21; test for trend, P=0.5) for ER-positive or PR-positive tumours and 0.48 (95% CI=0.26-0.86; test for trend, P=0.002) for ER-negative and PR-negative tumours (test for homogeneity, P=0.01). Conclusion: Our study provides additional support for the hypothesis that a dietary pattern rich in fruit and salad might protect against invasive breast cancer and that the effect might be stronger for ER- and PR-negative tumours. © 2011 Cancer Research UK All rights reserved

Correlation Between Obesity and High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (HDL-C) in Breast Cancer Patients of Southern Rajasthan

Despite advances in management of breast cancer, etiology is still elusive. Diet, obesity and other life style factors have been implicated in its etiology. We assessed the role of obesity and HDL-C levels in patients with rural background in etiology of breast cancer. To know the relation between obesity and incidence of breast cancer in local population. Also to know serum HDL-C level in breast cancer and its correlation with breast cancer. A nested pilot study of 50 breast cancer patients was done and matched with 50 healthy women as controls. Obesity was measured by weight, height, BMI (Body Mass Index), waist circumference (WC), Hip Circumference (HC), WC/HC ratio, and Serum High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (HDL-C) was measured in patients and in controls. There was no significant difference in distribution of weight (p = 0.298), height (p = 0.653), BMI (p = 0.459) and WHR (p = 0.052) among cases and controls. HDL-C level was observed to be significantly lower in cases than control group (p = 0.017).Breast cancer patients of pre menopausal age had significantly low Weight (p = 0.037) and BMI (p = 0.011) than post menopausal patients. In our study population only low HDL-C level had significant correlation with breast cancer and none of the other anthropometric measurements were associated with breast cancer. However, large population based case control and cohort studies are needed to identify low serum HDL-C as an independent predictor of increased risk of breast cancer