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Postmenopausal women who get most of their calories from fatty foods are at an increased risk of developing breast cancer, a new study appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggests. High body fat or obesity has been linked to increased breast cancer risk, but this is the first study to directly link a high-fat diet to the cancer.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute used data from the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study and asked 188,700 women about their diets. All women were ages 50 to 71 at the beginning of the study and were postmenopausal.
The women were given a questionnaire and were asked how often they ate 124 different foods. Besides frequency, they were also quizzed about portion size. Researchers measured fat intake as a percentage of the total energy intake. For example women who are least amount of fatty foods had a 20 percent intake, while those ho are a lot of fatty foods had 40 percent fat intake.
In the follow-up period of 4.4 years, 3,501 women developed invasive breast cancer.
Those who consumed the most amount of fats had an 11 percent higher incidence of invasive breast cancer as compared to women who ate the least amount of fatty foods. The high risk was present regardless of the type of fat consumed.
But the researchers did add that women with high fat intake were most likely to be on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) when they enrolled in the study. HRT is a known risk factor for breast cancer.
"In this large cohort of postmenopausal US women, we detected a direct association between dietary fat intake and the risk of invasive breast cancer," lead researcher Dr. Anne C. M. Thiebaut from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda and colleagues write. They added that fat may increase breast cancer risk by stimulating hormone production.
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, particularly in the developed countries. Over a million women are diagnosed worldwide every year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France.
Obesity is linked to risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. But a high fat diet was not mentioned. Hence Stephanie Smith-Warner, Ph.D., and Meir Stampfer, M.D., Dr.P.H, of the Harvard School of Public Health said in an accompanying article to focus on reducing body fat rather than fatty diet.
"The modest associations that have been observed for dietary fat and breast cancer risk in observational studies and clinical trials stand in sharp contrast to the robust evidence for a strong link between [body fat] and the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer," they added.
The American Cancer Society says that 200,000 women are diagnosed with the condition each year and 40,000 succumb to it. The National Cancer Institute estimates that at least 13.2 percent of the women born today will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives.
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