Common Misconceptions about Diet and Breast Cancer: An Unclear Issue to Dispel

Breast cancer (BC) constitutes a prevalent health condition among women. Recent years have witnessed the identification of dietary proto-oncogenic factors that deserve attention. Besides the well-known role of alcohol and red and processed meat in BC development, the impact of other dietary componen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cancers 2024-01, Vol.16 (2), p.306
Main Authors: Lalioti, Anastasia, Verzeletti, Laura, Tiberio, Paola, Gerosa, Riccardo, Gaudio, Mariangela, Saltalamacchia, Giuseppe, Pastore, Manuela, Zambelli, Alberto, Santoro, Armando, De Sanctis, Rita
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Beverages
Breast cancer
Cancer
Cancer therapies
Cohort analysis
Dairy products
Development and progression
Diet
Disease prevention
Drug dosages
Estrogens
Fermented milk products
Fruits
Health aspects
Hormone replacement therapy
Literature reviews
Meat
Medical prognosis
Menopause
Meta-analysis
Obesity
Oncology, Experimental
Post-menopause
Postmenopausal women
Prevention
Risk factors
Soybeans
Sugar
Sweeteners
Systematic review
Tumors
Women
Womens health
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Breast cancer (BC) constitutes a prevalent health condition among women. Recent years have witnessed the identification of dietary proto-oncogenic factors that deserve attention. Besides the well-known role of alcohol and red and processed meat in BC development, the impact of other dietary components remains unclear. Our narrative review aims to explore the diet-BC relationship, focusing on sugar, dairy, and soy consumption. We conducted a PubMed literature search covering the last decade (2013-2023) and included 35 papers. We found limited evidence on the association between high sugar intake and BC incidence. On the other hand, dairy and soy consumption displayed a protective effect in the majority of the analyzed papers. However, a significant degree of heterogeneity was reported among the results. Menopausal status and the specific BC molecular subtypes were the main factors influencing the interpretation of the results. Exploring dietary factors and BC revealed inconsistencies: high glycemic index post-menopause may be a risk factor, while sugar-sweetened drinks and artificial sweeteners yielded conflicting results; fermented dairy showed potential benefits, non-fermented dairy presented inconsistent findings; soy impact on BC varied according to molecular subtype, with some studies suggesting a positive association in luminal-like BC. Hence, further investigation is crucial to obtain a uniform consensus on the diet-BC relationship.
ISSN:2072-6694
2072-6694
DOI:10.3390/cancers16020306