Rood vlees verhoogt de kans op borstkanker flink.*
Uit een grootschalig onderzoek onder ruim 90.000 vrouwen blijkt dat het dagelijks eten van rood vlees de kans op borstkanker doet verdubbelen, dit in vergelijking met vrouwen die 3x keer of minder per week rood vlees eten. Dit lijkt in het bijzonder te gelden voor hormoon gevoelige borstkanker, het merendeel van de borstkankers.
Eerdere onderzoeken laten al zien dat rood vlees verantwoordelijk is voor andere chronische ziektes en kanker van pancreas en darmen. Voor vrouwen is dit onderzoek weer een reden om voorzichtig te zijn met rood vlees en meer fruit, groenten en volkoren granen te eten.
Red
Meat May Boost Breast Cancer Risk
Growth hormones, natural carcinogens in meat could be to blame,
researchers say.
--
Steaks, hamburgers and other red meat could raise younger women's risk for an
estrogen-linked form of breast cancer, researchers report.
"Hormone receptor-positive"
breast cancers are stimulated by higher levels of estrogen or progesterone
circulating in the body. A majority of breast cancers fall into this category.
"We found that higher red meat intake
may be a risk factor for hormone receptor-positive breast cancer among
premenopausal women," said lead author Eunyoung Cho, an assistant professor
of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "The majority of breast cancer is
hormone receptor-positive, and the incidence of hormone receptor-positive tumors
has been increasing in the United States," she added.
Earlier studies have looked at the
association between breast cancer and red meat but only among postmenopausal
women and without distinguishing between types of breast cancer. The results of
these studies are largely inconclusive, Cho's team noted.
The new report was published in the Nov. 13
issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the study, Cho's team collected data on
90,659 female nurses aged 26 to 46 taking part in the ongoing Nurses Health
Study II. The women were followed from 1991 through 2003.
The researchers excluded postmenopausal
women and women who had had cancer. During follow-up, 1,021 women developed
breast cancer. Of these cases, 512 were hormone receptor-positive cancers.
Cho's group found that women who had
one-and-a-half servings of red meat a day had nearly double the risk for hormone
receptor-positive cancer compared with women who ate less than three servings of
red meat per week.
The researchers speculated that the
increased risk may be linked to carcinogens found in cooked or processed red
meat, hormone treatments used to spur growth in cattle and the type of iron
found in red meat.
"Prevention of other chronic diseases,
including colon cancer, already provides a good reason for choosing a diet low
in red meat," Cho said. "So, our findings provide another reason for
women to reduce their red meat intake."
One expert believes more study is needed,
however.
"This is the first study that has
actually examined the association between breast cancer and the intake of red
meat in premenopausal women by type of cancer," said Eugenia Calle, the
managing director of analytic epidemiology at the American Cancer Society.
"But it's just one study," she said.
These results need to be replicated in
other studies "before we can believe this association is true," Calle
said.
Other studies that have looked for a
connection between red meat and breast cancer have not found a link, she noted.
Although these studies didn't look specifically at receptor-positive breast
cancer, this type of breast cancer makes up half of all cases. "If there
was something going on in that group, one would think that you would see a hint
of it," Calle said.
Despite these doubts, Calle agreed that
there is an association between red meat and other cancers, such a colorectal
cancer. So, she concurs with the American Cancer Society's dietary
recommendations to shun red meat.
"We recommend that people limit their
consumption of processed and red meat, and eat fruits and vegetables and
unrefined grains," Calle said. "We recommend this diet for many
reasons," she said. "Whether breast cancer will end up being one of
those reasons -- I'm not sure at this point."
More information
There's more on breast cancer at the American Cancer Society ( www.cancer.org ). (Nov. 2006)