Caloric Restrictions Shield Against Breast Cancer
    [03/10/2004; HealthDay News]

TUESDAY, March 9 (HealthDayNews) -- A new study on anorexia sheds
light on why women in developing countries have lower incidence
of breast cancer than other women: Diet is the key. 

Studies with animals have found that when they eat substantially
less than normal, they live longer and have fewer diseases, including
breast tumors. 

It is also known that women in developing countries have significantly
lower rates of breast cancer, says lead researcher Dr. Anders
Ekbom, a professor of epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute
in Stockholm, Sweden. 

To discover if these two facts were related, Ekbom and his colleague,
Dr. Karin Michels from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology
Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, decided to
study breast cancer among women with anorexia. 

They report their findings in the March 10 issue of the Journal
of the American Medical Association. 

Anorexia nervosa is a psychological disorder in which people don't
eat because they are under the delusion that they are too fat
despite being abnormally thin. The problem affects both women
and men, but mostly women in their teens. 

"Anorectic young women are similar to women in the Third World,
where they don't have an abundance of food," Ekbom says. 

Ekbom and Michels collected data on 7,303 Swedish women who were
hospitalized for anorexia nervosa from 1965 to 1998. At the time
of hospitalization, the women were all under age 40. 

The researchers then compared this data with entries in the Swedish
Cancer Registry and the Swedish Death Registry. They also looked
for records of these women in the Swedish Fertility Registry.

Ekbom and Michels found that, compared to women in the general
population of Sweden, the women with anorexia nervosa had 53
percent fewer cases of breast cancer. 

When they looked at women who had at least one child, they found
their risk of breast cancer was reduced by 76 percent. For women
who had not had children, the risk was reduced by 23 percent.

"The time window when diet has an effect on breast cancer is when
women are young -- around puberty," Ekbom says. 

He speculates that the drastically lower food intake when these
women were young continued to protect them as they aged. However,
the reason having children so dramatically reduced the cases
of breast cancer among these women is not known, Ekbom adds.

The full article can be found at:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1285&e=4&u=/hsn/20040310/hl_hsn/caloricrestrictionsshieldagainstbreastcancer&sid=95862980

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 2) ABSTRACT: Caloric Restriction and Incidence of Breast Cancer
    [03/10/2004; Journal of the AMA (Free Registration Required)]

Context: Restricting caloric intake is one of the most effective
ways to extend lifespan and to reduce spontaneous tumor occurrence
in experimental animals, but whether similar associations hold
in humans has not been appropriately studied. 

Objective: To determine whether caloric restriction in early life
reduces the risk of invasive breast cancer. 

Design, Setting, and Participants: Retrospective cohort study
using data from the Swedish Inpatient Registry, the Swedish Cancer
Registry, the Swedish Death Registry, and the Swedish Fertility
Registry. Participants were 7303 Swedish women hospitalized for
anorexia nervosa prior to age 40 years between 1965 and 1998.
Women were excluded (n = 31) if they were diagnosed with cancer
prior to their first discharge from hospitalization for anorexia
nervosa. 

Main Outcome Measure: Incidence of invasive breast cancer. 

Results:  Compared with the Swedish general population, women hospitalized
for anorexia nervosa prior to age 40 years had a 53% (95% confidence
interval [CI], 3%-81%) lower incidence of breast cancer; nulliparous
women with anorexia nervosa had a 23% (95% CI, 79% higher to
75% lower) lower incidence, and parous women with anorexia nervosa
had a 76% (95% CI, 13%-97%) lower incidence. 

Conlusions: Severe caloric restriction in humans may confer protection
from invasive breast cancer. Low caloric intake prior to first
birth followed by a subsequent pregnancy appears to be associated
with an even more pronounced reduction in risk. 

The full article can be found at:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/291/10/1226