Colon cancer patients who eat a typical Western diet seem to have triple the risk of recurrence, compared with those who don't follow a Western diet.
After a potentially curative resection of stage III colon cancer and adjuvant chemotherapy, a diet replete with sweets, french fries, refined grains, and red and processed meats “may facilitate a milieu that allows residual microscopic disease to proliferate and spread,” Dr. Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and his associates said.
Some studies have examined the influence of diet and other lifestyle factors on the development of colon cancer, but few have addressed diet's influence in patients with established colon cancer. The investigators assessed the effect of two distinct dietary patterns—a typical Western diet versus what the investigators termed a “prudent” diet that included greater intakes of fruits, vegetables, legumes, fish, poultry, and whole grains—in 1,009 adult subjects who were already participating in a National Cancer Institute trial comparing different chemotherapy regimens.
The subjects had undergone complete surgical resection of the primary tumor in 1999–2001, and had regional lymph node metastases but no distant metastases. Their diets were assessed midway through the adjuvant chemotherapy. They were followed for a median of 5 years; a total of 324 developed a recurrence during follow-up.
Greater intake of a Western diet was associated with recurrence and cancer mortality. Patients in the highest quintile of the Western dietary pattern were three times more likely to develop recurrence and die from cancer than those in the lowest quintile of the pattern, the authors said (JAMA 2007;298:754-64). There was no association between the prudent diet and risk of cancer recurrence or mortality.
The deleterious effect of the typical Western diet was not significantly modified by patient age, gender, body mass index, or level of physical activity.
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