Poor Diet in Young Adulthood Could Increase Breast Cancer Risk

New research finds that maintaining an unhealthy diet in adolescence and young adulthood is linked to a greater risk of premenopausal breast cancer.

Noting that adolescence is a highly susceptible period for mammary carcinogenesis, a team led by Karin B Michels, ScD, PhD, professor and chair in the department of epidemiology at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, also acknowledged that few prospective studies have examined the role of adolescent diet in breast cancer risk.
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In an effort to evaluate that role, Michels and colleagues investigated whether an adolescent and early adulthood inflammatory dietary pattern was associated with breast cancer among 45,204 women in the Nurses' Health Study 11, using reduced rank regression.

Participants completed a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) in 1991, when they were between the ages of 27 and 44 years, and completed a second FFQ about their high school diet in 1998. Among women who completed the high school FFQ, 1477 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed during 22 years of follow-up. An adolescent and early adulthood dietary pattern characterized by inflammation was associated with an increased incidence of premenopausal but not postmenopausal breast cancer, according to the authors, who wrote that the findings support the idea that an adolescent and early adult diet characterized by high intake of sugar-sweetened and diet soft drinks, refined grains, red and processed meat, and margarine, and a low intake of green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, and coffee might increase the incidence of premenopausal breast cancer.

"These findings underscore how important a healthy lifestyle and a healthy diet is for girls and young women," said Michels.

"We have increasingly come to appreciate that several chronic diseases already start in childhood. A healthy diet in adolescence also lowers the risk of heart disease later in life, because arteriosclerosis already starts in childhood," continued Michels. "Primary care practitioners play a very important role in communicating to parents and children alike [about] the importance of eating healthy in adolescence to reduce their risk of premature chronic disease. Fast-food diets and high soda consumption during adolescence promote inflammation and can plant the seeds of later life disease, such as breast cancer."

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Harris HR, Willett WC, Vaidya RL, Michels KB. An Adolescent and early adulthood dietary pattern associated with inflammation and the incidence of breast cancer [published online March 2017]. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-16-2273. 10.