Dietary patterns and breast cancer risk in a prospective Japanese study

The association between dietary patterns and breast cancer has been inconsistent.

This study examined associations between dietary patterns and risk of developing breast cancer among 23,172 women from the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study, including 119 incidences of breast cancer diagnosed during a median 16.9-year follow-up period. Factor analysis was conducted to obtain dietary patterns, and Cox proportional models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % confidence intervals (95 % CI) for breast cancer morbidity.

Three dietary patterns were identified: ''vegetable pattern'' (vegetables, potatoes, seaweed, tofu, fruits, fresh fish, eggs, and miso soup); ''animal food pattern'' (meat, deep-fried foods, fried vegetables, fish paste and salt-preserved fish); and "dairy product pattern'' (milk, dairy products, fruits, coffee and tea). After adjusting for potential confounders, the vegetable and dairy product patterns were not significantly associated with risk of breast cancer. However, the animal food pattern was significantly associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer morbidity among premenopausal women by HR 0.47 for the 2nd tertile (95 % CI 0.22-1.00) and HR 0.42 for the 3rd tertile (95 % CI 0.18-0.93), compared with the bottom tertile (p for trend 0.04).

We found no significant association between the vegetable and dairy product dietary patterns and breast cancer risk; however, an animal product diet may reduce risk of breast cancer among premenopausal Japanese women.