Med diet linked to lower cancer risk

A MEDITERRANEAN diet has been linked with a lower breast cancer risk in a major study that followed almost 15,000 women for over a decade.

The link was seen only among women who were past menopause and not younger women.

And while the findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that the diet itself offers protection against breast cancer, they add to research tying the traditional Mediterranean diet to lower risks of heart disease and cancers such as cancer of the colon and stomach.

In general, the Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, olive oil, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes and relative low in red meat and dairy products.

Of the 14,800 Greek women involved in the study, 240 were diagnosed with breast cancer.

Researchers said that those women who most closely followed the Mediterranean diet had a 22% less chance of developing the disease.

Cancer information services manager with the Irish Cancer Society, Naomi Fitzgibbon, said it was crucial women were aware of the lifestyle factors that can reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Meanwhile, a review published in the British Medical Journal questions the merits of breast screening.

Public health epidemiologist at Oxford University, Prof Klim McPherson, who was asked by the medical journal to review the evidence, found that polarised arguments about the benefits and harms of breast screening were not helping women to make an informed decision.

He concluded that mammography unavoidably increased the incidence of the disease considerably, not just by bringing the diagnosis forward, but by diagnosing cancer that might never develop because it resolves naturally or because it is very slow growing and by false positive results.

“What is required now is a full examination of all the data, preferably individual patient data, from all the recent studies,” he said.

A spokesperson for BreastCheck, the national breast screening programme that provides free mammograms to women aged 50 to 64, said the most recent and conservative estimate of the reduction in breast cancer mortality due to screening was 15%.

Over the last two years BreastCheck provided free mammograms to 92,061 women and detected 672 breast cancers, representing 7.3 cancers per 1,000 screened, which, according to the spokesperson, was considered within acceptable targets.

Since the programme began in 2000 to date, BreastCheck has detected more than 4,020 cancers.

l The National Cancer Helpline number is 1800 200700 and the Irish Cancer Society’s website is www.cancer.ie.