Meat, Dairy Won't Up Odds for Breast Cancer

Two studies find no clear link; other research supports fiber to ward off the disease

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

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FRIDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthDay News) -- An adult woman's intake of meat, eggs and dairy products should not boost her risk for breast cancer, new research shows.

For years, dietary factors have been debated as either boosting or reducing the risk of breast cancer, with research yielding conflicting results. But in the new research, scientists could not conclude that meat, eggs or dairy product intake as an adult raised breast cancer risk.

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A second new study didn't find that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) -- found in dairy products and in meat such as beef -- provided any protective effect again breast cancer, as some experts had suggested. It did not raise the risk, either.

"So far, we haven't seen a strong link between meat intake and fat intake in adulthood and breast cancer in adulthood," concluded Dr. Eleni Linos, MD, an epidemiologist at Stanford University Medical Center, who has also researched the link and co-authored an editorial to accompany the two research reports. All are published in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

But, she cautioned, "women should probably try to reduce their red meat intake to prevent cardiovascular disease."

In the first study, Italian researchers from Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan and other institutions used data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). They looked at diet information collected from almost 320,000 women between 1992 and 2003.

The women were from numerous European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the U.K. The team found 7,119 cases of breast cancer during follow up that lasted a median of nearly nine years (half of the patients were followed longer, half less). While they found a link between high butter consumption and breast cancer risk, it was only in premenopausal women. They did not find overall that meat, egg or dairy product intake was linked with an increased risk for breast cancer.

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