BOSTON—Dietary intake of fiber and nuts during adolescence influences subsequent risk of breast disease and may suggest a viable means for breast cancer prevention, according to a study published in Cancer Causes and Control (2010;21(7):1033-46). Among 29,480 women who completed a high school diet questionnaire in 1998, 682 proliferative benign breast disease (BBD) cases were identified and confirmed by centralized pathology review between 1991 and 2001. Multivariate-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 percent confidence intervals (CIs).
Women in the highest quintile of adolescent fiber intake had a 25-percent lower risk of proliferative BBD than women in the lowest quintile. High school intake of nuts was also related to significantly reduced BBD risk. Women consuming at least two servings of nuts/week had a 36-percent lower risk than women consuming less than one serving/month. Results were essentially the same when the analysis was restricted to prospective cases (n=142) diagnosed after return of the high school diet questionnaire.
