Study: Drug combos may raise breast cancer risk

ORLANDO, Fla., 31 may 2009 – Breast cancer survivors risk having their disease come back if they use certain antidepressants while also taking the cancer prevention drug tamoxifen, worrisome new research shows.

About 500,000 women in the United States take tamoxifen, which cuts in half the chances of a breast cancer recurrence. Many of them also take antidepressants for hot flashes, because hormone pills aren't considered safe after breast cancer.

Doctors have long known that some antidepressants and other medicines can lower the amount of tamoxifen's active form in the bloodstream. But whether this affects cancer risk is unknown.

The new study, reported Saturday at a cancer conference in Florida, is the largest to look at the issue. It found that using these interfering drugs — including Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft — can virtually wipe out the benefit tamoxifen provides.

Many doctors question the magnitude of harm from combining these medicines, and a second, smaller study suggests it may not be very large.

But the bottom line is the same: Not all antidepressants pose this problem, and women should talk to their doctors about which ones are best.

"There are other alternatives we can consider" that are safer, said Dr. Eric Winer, breast cancer chief at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston.

He had no role in the study, which was done by Medco Health Solutions Inc., a large insurance benefits manager. Researchers used members' medical records to identify 353 women taking tamoxifen plus other drugs that might interfere with it, and 945 women taking tamoxifen alone. Those taking a drug combo did so for about a year on average.

Next, researchers checked to see how many were treated for second cancers in the following two years. Breast cancer recurred in about 7 percent of women on tamoxifen alone, and in 14 percent of women also taking other drugs that could interfere — mainly the antidepressants Paxil and Prozac, and, to a lesser extent, Zoloft.

If women want to take an antidepressant, "you probably want to stay away from those three," said Medco's chief medical officer, Dr. Robert Epstein.

No greater breast cancer risk was seen in women taking the antidepressants Celexa, Lexapro or Luvox with tamoxifen, and there are reasons to think that other antidepressants may be safe as well, Epstein said.

A second study led by Dr. Vincent Dezentje of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands found little risk from combining tamoxifen and popular antidepressants. However, only 150 women in the study took such combos for more than two months, and they were compared to women taking combos for a shorter time — not to women using tamoxifen alone.

The Dutch and Medco studies were presented at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has been considering a change to tamoxifen's label to warn about the antidepressants drugs and a gene variation some women have that can make tamoxifen less effective. An advisory panel unanimously recommended a change in 2006, but the agency is still considering it.

"This is a very controversial area," said Dr. Claudine Isaacs, a breast specialist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Until these data are absolutely clear, I would avoid drugs that impact on tamoxifen metabolism."

Breast cancer is the most common major cancer in American women. More than 182,000 new cases were diagnosed last year, and it caused nearly 41,000 deaths.

Vigorous Exercise Can Cut Breast Cancer Risk

01 nov 2008-- Vigorous activity can reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 30 percent in normal-weight women, according to an 11-year U.S. study of 32,269 postmenopausal women.
For the study, vigorous activity was defined as heavy housework (scrubbing floors, washing windows, demanding yard work, digging, chopping wood) and strenuous sports or exercise, such as running, fast jogging, competitive tennis, aerobics, bicycling on hills, and fast dancing.
While vigorous activity reduced breast cancer risk in normal-weight women, it had no effect in women who were overweight or obese, according to study leader Michael F. Leitzmann and colleagues.
They also found that non-vigorous activity, such as light housework (vacuuming, doing laundry, painting, general gardening) and light sports or exercise (walking, hiking, light jogging, recreational tennis, bowling) offered no protection against breast cancer.
The findings were published in the journal Breast Cancer Research.
"Possible mechanisms through which physical activity may protect against breast cancer that are independent of body mass include reduced exposure to growth factors, enhanced immune function, and decreased chronic inflammation, variables that are related both to greater physical activity and to lower breast cancer risk," the study authors wrote.
"An alternative explanation for the stronger apparent effect of vigorous activity among lean over heavy women is that heavier women may misreport non-vigorous activities as vigorous activities," the researchers added.

Physical Activity Linked to Lower Premenopausal Breast Cancer Risk

By Charles Bankhead
BOSTON, 15 may 2008-- Regular physical activity has been associated with a reduction in the risk of premenopausal breast cancer, according to data from the Nurses' Health Study II.
The association with exercise and the risk of premenopausal breast cancer joined previous epidemiological research that had linked exercise with a reduction in risk for breast cancer after menopause.
In the current study, premenopausal women who reported as little as 3.25 hours of physical activity weekly had a 23% reduction in breast cancer risk compared with women who were less active, found investigators at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Women reporting the most lifetime exercise versus those reporting the least showed about a 30% reduction in breast cancer risk in association with increased physical activity. Sonia S. Maruti, Sc.D., and colleagues reported in the May 13 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Maruti is now with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
"These results suggest that consistent physical activity during a woman's lifetime is associated with decreased breast cancer risk," said Dr. Maruti. "Unlike many risk factors for breast cancer, physical activity is an exposure that can be modified. This association, if found to be causal, has public health implications for prevention."
Numerous studies have demonstrated a favorable impact of physical activity on postmenopausal breast cancer. However, limited data had pertained to the effects of physical activity on breast cancer risk in premenopausal women.
The authors analyzed data on 64,777 premenopausal women in the Nurses' Health Study II. Initiated in 1989, the ongoing study includes biennial questionnaires to update information on lifestyle and changes in health status. Since 1997 study participants have been asked about their leisure-time activity from ages 12 to the present.
During six years of follow-up, 550 participants developed breast cancer. The strongest associations with physical activity were for total lifetime leisure-time activity. Women who reported 39 or more metabolic equivalent hours per week (MET-h/wk) of activity (equivalent to 3.25 hours of running or 13 hours of walking) had a relative risk of breast cancer of 0.77 (95% CI 0.64 to 0.93) compared with women reporting less activity.
Women reporting the highest lifetime total physical activity (≥54 MET-h/wk) had an age-adjusted breast cancer incidence of 136 per 100,000 person-years. In contrast, the lowest category of physical activity (<21 href="http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/djn135" target="_blank">"A prospective study of age-specific physical activity and premenopausal breast cancer" J Natl Cancer Inst 2008; DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djn135.

Daily Aspirin May Reduce Breast Cancer Risk

By Steven Reinberg
3 may 2008-- Women who take an aspirin each day may reduce their risk of developing the most common type of breast cancer by 16 percent, according to the results of a large study.
Estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer accounts for some 75 percent of all breast cancers, experts say. While aspirin reduced the risk of this form of breast malignancy, other painkillers did not, the U.S. team found.
"Many studies have looked at the relationship between nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and cancer, and the results have been all over the board," said lead researcher Gretchen Gierach, a cancer prevention fellow at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. "We want to further examine the question to see if we can add some clarity, since studies have looked at NSAIDs but haven't broken them down by type of NSAID."
The report is published in the April 30 online edition of Breast Cancer Research.
In the study, Gierach's team collected data on more than 127,000 women aged 51 to 72 with no history of cancer. All had participated in the U.S. National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. That study was designed to look at diet, health-related behaviors, and the risk for cancer.
Gierach noted that aspirin does has different biological effects compared to other NSAIDs.
Aspirin is one of many NSAIDs but unlike other NSAIDs it has irreversible effects on cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes. For this reason, the researchers looked at the differences in cancer risk based on whether women took aspirin or other NSAIDs.
"Among women who reported taking aspirin on a daily basis there was a modest reduction in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer," Gierach said.
Overall, NSAIDs did not affect the total risk of breast cancer. However, the daily use of aspirin was associated with a 16 percent reduction in the risk for estrogen receptor-positive breast tumors.
There was no link between daily aspirin and the incidence of estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, the researchers report.
The finding could have important implications for cancer prevention, Gierach says, but a lot more work is needed to see if the effect is real. Moreover, she believes that it is still too early to recommend that women start taking aspirin to prevent breast malignancy.
"This is an exciting implication, if it's true," Gierach said. "But we need further clarity from other studies."
One expert noted that chronic aspirin use can have serious consequences and should not be used for cancer prevention.
"The American Cancer Society does not recommend using aspirin for cancer prevention because aspirin can cause serious gastrointestinal bleeding," said Eric J. Jacobs, Strategic Director of Pharmacoepidemiology in the department of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.
Whether or not you should use aspirin for disease prevention is a question that should be discussed with your doctor, who can take your medical history into account, Jacobs said. "This decision should be based on balancing the proven benefits of aspirin in preventing heart disease against the proven risks of serious gastrointestinal bleeding," he said.
Another expert was intrigued by the findings.
"This theory has been around for many years," said Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action. "If this works, it is a very exciting development for a lot of people who are thinking about how we can control not only cancer, but the price of cancer drugs."
The finding is confirming what many people have thought for a long time, Brenner added. But she stressed that aspirin would not be "a cure-all, it's only reducing the risk of estrogen positive-breast cancer."
Like the other experts, Brenner doesn't advise women to start taking aspirin to prevent breast cancer. "There are risks with aspirin, and there are people for whom aspirin is not indicated," she said. "But they might want to talk to their doctors about this study and whether aspirin is appropriate for them."

Trans-fats linked to breast cancer risk in study

Apr 11, 2008 - Trans-fats, which are being phased out of food because they clog arteries, may raise the risk of getting breast cancer, European researchers reported on Friday.
They found that women with the highest blood levels of trans-fats had about twice the risk of breast cancer compared to women with the lowest levels.
"At this stage, we can only recommend limiting the consumption of processed foods, the source of industrially produced trans-fatty acid," the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Trans-fats or trans-fatty acids are made in creating artificially hardened fats -- in the process of hydrogenization, for instance.
They were, ironically, meant to be healthful replacements for artery-clogging saturated fats such as butter and lard.
But the process of making vegetable oil behave like butter made it as unhealthful as butter. New York and California have banned trans-fats in restaurant foods. Canada and Britain have considered it and countless food companies have dropped them as an ingredient.
Veronique Chajes of the French national scientific research center at the University of Paris-South and colleagues studied women taking part in a large European cancer trial.
They looked at blood samples collected between 1995 and 1998 from 25,000 women who had volunteered to report on their eating and lifestyle habits and then be followed for years to see if they developed cancer.
They studied 363 women diagnosed with breast cancer, comparing their blood levels of fatty acids with those of women without cancer.
The higher the levels of trans-fatty acids, the more likely a woman was to have cancer, Chajes and colleagues found.
Women with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, being studied for their potential benefits to health, were not any less likely to have breast cancer, the researchers found.
Obese women are more likely to develop breast cancer, among other types of cancer, and high-fat diets are also linked with breast cancer.
Trans-fats can be found in cooking fats, baked goods, snacks and a variety of other prepared foods. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fatty fish such as salmon, walnuts and leafy green vegetables.

Urban Women May Have Greater Breast Cancer Risk

By Serena GordonHealthDay Reporter1 hour, 5 minutes ago
MONDAY, Nov. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Women who live in urban areas appear to have more dense breast tissue than their suburban or rural counterparts, new research suggests.
The finding is potentially important because women with more dense breasts have a higher risk of breast cancer.
The study, which compared rural women from Greece to suburban and urban women in the United Kingdom, found that city-dwelling women were 54 percent more likely than their rural peers to have dense breasts.
"Our study suggests that the closer to urban and high population densities that a woman resides, and in particular works, the greater likelihood there is that she will have denser breasts," said study author Dr. Nicholas Perry, director of the London Breast Institute at the Princess Grace Hospital.
"For every 1 percent increase in breast density, there is said to be a 2 percent increase in the relative risk of developing breast cancer," he added.
Perry was to present the findings Monday at the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting, in Chicago.
Each year, nearly 180,000 American women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and about 40,500 die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). Over a lifetime, about one in eight women will develop breast cancer.
Known risk factors include a family history of the disease, getting your first period before the age of 12, beginning menopause after age 55, not having children or having your first child after 30, being overweight, drinking more than one alcoholic drink a day, and living a sedentary lifestyle, according to the ACS.
The new study included digital mammograms from 972 women, between 29 and 87 years old, living or working in rural, suburban and urban areas. Two hundred and twenty-five women were from rural areas, 135 lived in the suburbs, and 257 women either lived or worked in an urban area.
Breast density isn't an indicator of breast size, noted Dr. Julia Smith, director of the New York University Cancer Institute's Breast Cancer Screening and Prevention Program. Instead, breast density indicates more glandular breast tissue and ducts rather than fatty tissue. That means more area for breast cancer to develop and hide, she explained.
Overall, 26 percent of the women in the study had breasts that were classified as fatty, while the remaining women had density findings ranging from scattered to extremely dense. Thirty-one percent of the rural residents had breasts classified as fatty, while 26 percent of suburban women and just 22 percent of urban women did.
Perry and his colleagues found that women who lived and worked in a city were more likely to have dense breasts than either their rural or suburban counterparts. Urban women had a 54 percent greater chance of having dense breasts than women living in rural areas, and suburban women had a 14 percent higher risk of dense breasts than rural women.
"This is an interesting finding," Smith said. "But, we need to tease out the confounding factors. Are these population issues or does being in an urban environment increase risk?"
For example, she said, urban women may have better diets and may exercise more, both of which can contribute to denser breast tissue, Smith said.
Perry also said there are many lifestyle factors that need to be considered, and he hopes that now that he and his colleagues have drawn attention to the issue, more studies will be done to uncover the cause of this disparity.
One concern that Perry has is that past studies have found that urban women may be less likely to undergo screening for breast cancer, and this study suggests that it may be even more important for these women to get mammograms as recommended.
"All women should be given the opportunity to participate in breast screening programs, if eligible, but perhaps women in the city need to be extra vigilant in this regard and not miss out," Perry said.
More information
To learn more about breast cancer prevention, visit BreastCancer.org.

Sunlight may cut breast cancer risk for some women

By Anthony J. Brown, MD2 hours, 4 minutes ago
Exposure to sunlight may reduce the risk of advanced breast cancer in women with light skin pigmentation, according to the results of a population-based study appearing in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
"We believe that sunlight helps reduce women's risk of breast cancer because the body manufactures the active form of vitamin D from exposure to sunlight," lead author Dr. Esther M. John, from the Northern California Cancer Center in Fremont, said in a statement.
"It is possible that these effects were observed only among light-skinned women because sun exposure produces less vitamin D among women with naturally darker pigmentation."
The study is not the first to link sun exposure with a reduced risk of breast cancer, but the way that sun exposure was measured was new, according to John.
"We measured women's skin pigmentation on the forehead (usually exposed to the sun) and on the upper inner arm (usually not exposed to the sun) and used the difference between the two measurements as a measure of past sun exposure. Other studies have usually relied on self-reported sun exposure," she told Reuters Health.
The study included 1788 women with breast cancer and a comparison group of 2129 "controls" - women without breast cancer, living the San Francisco Bay Area of California (1995-2003). In addition to the sun exposure test mentioned, skin specimens were obtained and analyzed in a subgroup of subjects in each group.
High levels of sun exposure were associated with a 47-percent reduced risk of advanced breast cancer in light-skinned women, the results show. Mutations of the vitamin D receptor gene did not affect the association.
However, this association was not seen in women with medium or dark skin and was only apparent for advanced disease, not localized breast cancer.
The results could have important public health implications, but they will require confirmation in other studies, the authors conclude.
"While the public needs to be advised to avoid excessive sun exposure and sun burns in particular because of the known risk of skin cancer and melanoma, never getting any sun exposure leads to vitamin D deficiency," John said.
The evidence is increasing that vitamin D may decrease the risk of certain cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon cancers. A safe way to get vitamin D is from supplements."
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology October 18, 2007.

ECCO: Breast Cancer Risk Up for Women Consuming Three Alcoholic Drinks a Day

BARCELONA, Spain, Sept. 27 -- Women who consume three of more alcoholic drinks a day have a 30% greater risk of developing breast cancer than women who averages one drink. "It doesn't seem to matter whether the alcohol comes in the form of beer, wine, or spirits," said Yan Li, M.D., Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente Medical Care in Oakland, Calif., and colleagues, reported at the European Cancer Care Organization meeting here.
They reviewed 70,033 records of patients at Kaiser Permanent from 1978 through 1985. By 2004, breast cancer had been diagnosed in 2,829 of these women. The role of specific beverage types was studied among 37,879 women consuming one drink per month. Of that group, 1,509 subsequently were diagnosed with breast cancer.
They found that 10,570 of the women were primarily wine drinkers, 3,783 preferred spirits, and 2,702 drank beer. Another 20,824 recorded no particular preference.
Dr. Li said she tried to find a relationship between breast cancer and the type of alcohol consumed but did not identify any significant correlations. For example, she said the relative risk of developing breast cancer when comparing women who had specific drink preferences with those with no drink preference was 1.06 for wine drinkers; 1.02 for liquor drinkers, and 1.02 for beer drinkers. The confidence limits crossed unity in each case, meaning the results would not be considered significant.
"We also looked at the type of wine - whether drinking red wine or white wine made a difference - and we could not find a significant difference there either," Dr. Li said.
However, when the researchers analyzed the amount of drinking, there was a pattern, she said. When compared with women who had less than one drink a day:
The relative risk for woman consuming one to two drinks a day was 1.1 - a 10% increased risk for breast cancer, but not a significant difference.
The relative risk or women taking three or more drinks per day was 1.3 - or 30%.
Dr. Li said that when the data were analyzed for type and amount of drink a similar pattern for each type of alcohol was observed - the more drinks of any particular type of alcoholic beverage increased the risk of breast cancer.
"We believe that the culprit is alcohol itself," she said.
Why alcohol should cause breast cancer remains a mystery, said oncologist John Smyth, M.D., of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Center at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
"I don't think anyone has a very good idea about what the mechanism of action could be," said Dr. Smyth, president of the Federation of European Cancer Societies, which sponsors the biennial ECCO meeting.
"It appears, like many things in life, that moderation is the best approach with alcohol," he said. "We believe that alcohol has some benefits but when can have detrimental effects when taken to excess." Primary source: European Journal of Cancer Supplements, Vol 5 No 4, Page 161
Source reference: Yan Li et al, "Wine, liquor, beer, and risk of breast cancer" Abstract P#1201, European Journal of Cancer Supplements, Vol 5 No 4, Page 161

Three drinks a day ups breast cancer risk: study

By Michael KahnThu Sep 27, 2:09 AM ET
Three or more drinks a day, whether beer, wine or spirits, boost a woman's risk of breast cancer as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
The relationship between alcohol and breast cancer is known but there has been little data on whether the choice of drink made a difference, they told a European Cancer Conference.
In what the researchers said was one of the largest studies to investigate links between breast cancer and alcohol -- found that alcohol itself and the amount a person consumed were key rather than the type of drink.
"Studies have consistently linked drinking alcohol to an increased risk of female breast cancer, but until now there has been little data, most of it conflicting, about an independent role played by the choice of beverage type," Arthur Klatsky of Kaiser Permanente in California and one of the researchers said.
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer killer of women, after lung cancer. It will be diagnosed in 1.2 million people globally this year and will kill 500,000.
Other studies have shown that light- to moderate alcohol use can protect against heart attacks, though Klatsky said other mechanisms were probably at work.
The heart protection likely comes from alcohol-induced "good" cholesterol, reduced blood clotting and decreased diabetes risk. But for breast cancer, the ethyl alcohol found in all booze likely ups the risk, the researchers said.
The researchers looked at the drinking habits of more than 70,000 women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who supplied information during health examinations between 1978 and 1985. By 2004, nearly 3,000 of the women were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Among women who drank, the team examined a preference for a type of alcohol and how much of each drink people consumed. They also compared the total amount consumed and compared it to women who drank less than one drink a day.
Women who drank between one and two alcoholic drinks per day increased their risk of breast cancer by 10 percent compared with people who consumed less than one drink each day, the study found. The risk of breast cancer jumped by 30 percent in women who drank more than three drinks a day.
The results were also similar in different age and ethnic groups, the researchers said.

Low-dose radiation may raise breast cancer risk

Wed Aug 15, 8:07 PM ET
Some forms of low-dose radiation treatment may increase the risk of breast cancer, particularly in genetically susceptible women, according to a report in the International Journal of Cancer.
Moderate- to high-dose radiation therapy has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer, the authors explain, but it remains uncertain whether the risk extends to low-dose radiation, such as diagnostic chest X-rays.
Dr. Esther M. John from the Northern California Cancer Center, Fremont, and associates investigated the association between therapeutic or diagnostic radiation exposure and breast cancer using data from the Breast Cancer Family Registry. Self-reported information was available for 2,254 breast cancer patients and 3,431 healthy women, which included the sisters of the patients or women from the general population.
Radiation treatment of a previous cancer increased the risk of breast cancer by 3.55-fold, the investigators report. They also noted a trend toward higher breast cancer risk among women who received radiotherapy for acne or other skin conditions.
Women who had diagnostic chest X-rays for tuberculosis or pneumonia had more than twice the normal risk of breast cancer.
Women who underwent radiation for heart catheterization, spine problems, gastrointestinal illness or other unspecified chest X-rays were not at increased risk for breast cancer, the researchers note.
"To our knowledge," John and colleagues note, "this is the largest population-based case-control study conducted to date exploring associations with radiation exposure for conditions that have not been the focus of follow-up studies (i.e., radiation treatment for acne or pneumonia). Given the low prevalence of such exposures, large sample sizes are needed to detect associations in a case-control study."
"The findings of elevated breast cancer risk in women exposed to radiation for pneumonia and acne presented here warrant further investigation," they conclude.
SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer, July 15, 2007.

Researchers link US breast cancer drop to less hormone use

Tue Aug 14, 6:25 PM ET
The decline in US breast cancer rates in recent years is more likely a result of the sharp drop-off in the use of menopause hormones than a function of more spotty screening, US researchers said Tuesday.
The number of breast cancer cases in postmenopausal American women plunged seven percent in 2003, a year after millions of women ditched the hormones after a major study linked them to a higher risk of heart, stroke and breast cancer.
The numbers continued to level off in 2004.
For some scientists, the numbers clearly showed a link between breast cancer and hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but others suggested that the trend could be explained by a relatively modest decline in the numbers of women getting mammograms in recent years.
To determine what was driving the statistic -- a backlash against HRT or lower detection rates -- researchers at the University of San Francisco, California, decided to review breast cancer rates among women who had been routinely screened over a period of several years.
The investigators reviewed the medical records of more than 232,000 women from seven mammography registries across the country who had been screened for breast cancer between 1997 and 2003.
The results clearly showed that breast cancer rates went down as the post-menopausal women abandoned their estrogen and progestin supplements.
The records showed that seven percent of the women in the study group quit using the hormones per year between 2000 and 2002 and a whopping 34 percent followed suit in each of the following two years. Over the same period, breast cancer cases declined annually by five percent.
"We think our results are pretty definitive and they point to hormones as the reason for the decline in breast cancer rates," said lead author Karla Kerlikowske, an epidemiologist at the University of San Francisco.
The paper appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Cancer risk higher with Western diet

By JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press WriterWed Jul 11, 6:40 PM ET
Older Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet loaded with meats and sweets appear to have a greater risk for breast cancer than women who eat mainly soy and vegetables, a new study has concluded.
Previous research has found connections between a meat- and fat-heavy Western diet and several kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes. And other research has identified links between obesity and cancer.
Researchers said this study signals a link between breast cancer and overall eating patterns — not a single food or nutrient — in Asian women, who have long had lower rates of the disease than Western women. But their numbers have started to rise as their diets have become more Westernized.
The study, which is not definitive, looked at general eating habits of about 3,000 women in Shanghai, ranging in age from 25 to 64. About half of that group had been diagnosed with breast cancer and are participants in an ongoing breast cancer study in Shanghai.
All the women were interviewed at length about their diets, answering questions about how often they ate 76 different items commonly found in Shanghai. Researchers then categorized the women into one of two dietary groups.
The "meat-sweet" group loaded up on red meat, shrimp, fish, candy, desserts, bread and milk. The "vegetable-soy" group stuck to tofu, vegetables, sprouts, beans, fish and soy milk.
Post-menopausal women in the meat-sweet group showed a 60 percent greater risk of developing the most common kind of breast cancer, the kind fueled by the hormone estrogen, compared to those in the vegetable-soy group, according to U.S. and Chinese researchers who conducted the study.
"We saw the clearest effect when we looked at post-menopausal women who were overweight, so it looks like there's an interaction between a meat-sweet diet and being overweight," said study co-author Marilyn Tseng, of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
Researchers couldn't say how the combination of a Western diet and obesity might work in tandem to drive breast cancer.
The study, which appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, found no link, good or bad, between breast cancer and a vegetable-soy diet.
"This isn't a breakthrough, but it does add to the growing body of evidence that diet is related to breast cancer and other cancers," said Lawrence Cheskin, associate professor of international health and human nutrition at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not connected to the study.
"We see a rise in cancers depending on what we're eating and if we're obese."
Tseng also said that the research should be a less frustrating guide for anybody looking to adopt sensible eating habits, instead of often contradictory research that names one vitamin, mineral or food as a cancer-quashing magic bullet.
"This gives us a broader sense because it looks at diet as a whole as opposed to targeting one element," Tseng said. "In terms of public health recommendations, that tends to give the wrong impression that you can reduce your risk of breast cancer by going after one specific component."

Breast cancer genes can come from father

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press WriterTue Jun 19, 7:44 PM ET
A deadly gene's path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from Dad.
A new study suggests thousands of young women with breast cancer — an estimated 8,000 a year in the U.S. — aren't offered testing to identify faulty genes and clarify their medical decisions.
Guidelines used by insurance companies to decide coverage for genetic testing should change to reflect the findings, said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel of City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. Testing can cost more than $3,000.
"Interestingly, it's about Dad," Weitzel said. Half of genetic breast cancers are inherited from a woman's father, not her mother. But unless Dad has female relatives with breast cancer, the faulty gene may have been passed down silently, without causing cancer. (Men can get genetic breast cancer, too, but it's not common.)
Weitzel said doctors often overlook the genetic risk from the father's side of the family.
The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the genetic test results from 306 women diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50.
None of the cancer patients in the study had a family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
Among the women with plenty of female relatives, about 5 percent had BRCA gene mutations. But among those with few sisters and aunts older than 45 (when breast cancer would be likely to appear), almost 14 percent had mutations of the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. That suggests that these cancer patients were unaware of their genetic mutations because there were so few women in the family to signal a cancer risk.
The researchers defined few female relatives as fewer than two on either the father's or mother's side of the family.
Women who were adopted and don't know their family medical history should be aware of the findings, Weitzel said. Women whose female relatives died young before breast cancer had time to show up also are affected.
When such a woman gets breast cancer before age 50, she should get a genetic test, said Dr. Noah Kauff, a cancer geneticist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. That would help her decide whether to have the unaffected breast or her ovaries removed to prevent more cancer. Kauff was not involved in the research, but wrote an accompanying editorial.
"The study allows physicians and patients to make an argument to insurance carriers that, although there's not a family history of breast cancer, it's still reasonable to test and it should be a covered benefit," Kauff said.
Genetic testing helps a woman choose her next medical steps. A woman with breast cancer who has a BRCA gene mutation has a four times greater risk of developing cancer in the other breast and a 10 times greater risk of ovarian cancer than does a woman with breast cancer who has no BRCA gene mutation.
Some women with a family history of breast cancer choose to have a BRCA genetic test so they can decide whether to reduce their cancer risk by removing their ovaries and breasts before any cancer appears. Drug therapy and monitoring with annual MRI tests offer alternatives.
Testing the genes of more women would cost more money, but Weitzel said that won't add significantly to health care costs and will prevent cancer in some of the women.

Vitamin D, Calcium Might Lower Breast Cancer Risk

TUESDAY, May 29 (HealthDay News) -- Premenopausal women who get a lot of vitamin D and calcium may cut their risk of breast cancer by almost a third, Harvard Medical School researchers report.
"Adequate intakes of calcium and vitamin D are necessary for women in keeping up their health, and additionally, these two nutrients may help prevent breast cancer development, especially among premenopausal women," said lead author Jennifer Lin, an assistant professor of medicine.
Her team's report appears in the May 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the study, Lin's team collected data on more than 10,500 premenopausal and almost 21,000 postmenopausal women age 45 and older who were part of the Women's Health Study. The data included information on what they ate and the dietary supplements they took.
Over an average of 10 years, 276 premenopausal women and 743 postmenopausal women went on to develop breast cancer.
The researchers found that premenopausal women whose intake of vitamin D and calcium was high had about a 30 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer. However, they didn't find this association for postmenopausal women.
Animal studies have also found an association between calcium and vitamin D intake and breast cancer prevention, Lin's group noted.
"Calcium and vitamin D may confer protection against breast tumorigenesis," Lin said. "However, more studies are necessary to investigate the potential utility of these two nutrients in breast cancer development," she added.
One expert stressed that the evidence for a protective effect of vitamin D and calcium is still not clear.
"I really don't think that one can say from this study that the effect is only in premenopausal women, because there are a number of factors in the study that may have limited the ability to see the effect," said Victoria Stevens, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society. "This is particularly true for vitamin D, because most vitamin D comes from exposure to sunlight, which they did not take into account."
At this point in time, a recommendation that women take vitamin D or calcium to decrease their breast cancer risk is not warranted, she said.
"I don't think we should go that far," Stevens said. "The society doesn't recommend the use of any vitamin supplements" to prevent breast cancer.
"I don't think this study says that we should change that," Stevens said. "At this point, the evidence doesn't support anything more than getting a good diet and maintaining good levels of physical activity," she said.

Plant foods may cut breast cancer risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Postmenopausal women who eat healthy amounts of plant foods rich in estrogen-like compounds called lignans may reduce their risk of developing breast cancer, according to a new study.
"Following the general dietary guidelines for a healthy and prudent diet, that is, consuming large amounts and varieties of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain cereal products daily (all foods rich in lignans) may also help prevent breast cancer in postmenopausal women," Dr. Francoise Clavel-Chapelon told Reuters Health.
Clavel-Chapelon, from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Villejuif, France, and associates evaluated the relationship between the amount of four types of plant ligands in the diet and breast cancer risk in 58,049 postmenopausal French women.
Over an average follow-up period of 7.7 years, 1469 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSWRI17360020070321?feedType=RSS

High-fat diet may increase breast cancer risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A large study of middle-age women with a wide range of fat in their diet shows that eating a high-fat diet raises the risk of developing invasive breast cancer.
The findings, reported in the Journal of the
National Cancer , stem from the
National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, in which 188,736 postmenopausal women reported detailed information on their diet in the mid-1990s.
During an average follow-up of 4.4 years, 3501 women developed breast cancer.
Based on responses to a 124-item "food frequency" questionnaire, researchers found that women who got 40 percent of their calories from fat had about a 15 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer compared with women got 20 percent of their calories from fat.
Using a more precise 24-hour dietary recall questionnaire, "we found a 32-percent increased risk of breast cancer" among women with a high level of fats in their diet, study chief Dr. Anne C. M. Thiebaut from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.
The increased risk of breast cancer associated with a high-fat diet was seen for all types of fat (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated) and seemed to be confined to women who were not using hormone replacement therapy at the start of the study.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070320/hl_nm/high_fat_diet_dc