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Low Fat May Help Breast Cancer Cases

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 May 2005, 15:00 CDT

Breast cancer patients who follow diets low in fat may reduce the chance that their tumors will return, scientists have reported.

It was, researchers said, the first time that a large, rigorous study had shown that diet could have any effect on any cancer.

The rate of cancer recurrence for women in the study who were assigned to follow a low-fat diet was reduced more than 20 percent over five years, the investigators found. Of 975 women assigned to a low-fat diet, 96, or 9.8 percent, had recurrences. But cancer returned for 181 of 1,462 women, or 12.4 percent, who were assigned to maintain their usual diet.

The study's principal investigator, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute in Torrance, California, described the data at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando, Florida.

In a telephone interview, Chlebowski explained that the women already had the standard medical treatment lumpectomy or mastectomy followed by radiation and then hormonal therapy or chemotherapy when appropriate. Although the treatments varied, the two groups were equivalent because the women were assigned at random to follow a low- fat diet.

The additional benefit from diet, Chlebowski said, was equivalent to adding a new drug to their regimen.

"This is the first randomized clinical trial showing that diet may have an impact on breast cancer outcome, or any cancer outcome, for that matter," Chlebowski said.

But he and independent experts at the meeting and elsewhere said the study's findings, which were of only marginal statistical significance, must be confirmed before it is recommended that women with breast cancer follow such a diet.

"This is potentially very good news," said Dr. David Hunter, a professor of cancer prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Anything that could be done about reducing breast cancer recurrence would be enormously valuable."

Dr. Larry Norton, a breast cancer expert at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, one of the centers in the study, said the results had made him change his advice. "Before this I was saying there's no reason not to eat a low-fat diet," Norton said, adding, "Now I am saying there is a reason to eat to low-fat diet."

Norton said that since he knew of no drawback to a low-fat diet, "I don't see why you have to do a corroborating study."

The findings follow a report last week that middle-aged women with an early stage of breast cancer who have chemotherapy and hormone treatment can halve their risk of death from breast cancer for at least 15 years.

But Hunter and other scientists tempered their enthusiasm over the new study's results with questions about what the findings meant.

It is not clear, they said, what made the difference. It could be the small amount of fat the women ate or it could be that they lost weight. Other studies have found that breast cancer is less likely to recur in women who lose weight after their initial treatment.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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