Abstract
Although a number of studies explain the association between dietary patterns, which take into account that foods are eaten in combination, and breast cancer risk, the findings are inconsistent. We examined the association between dietary patterns and multi-grain rice intake, and the risk of breast cancer in a large-scale prospective cohort study in Korean women. A total of 93,306 women aged 40–69 years from the Health Examinees-Gem (HEXA-G) study (2004 and 2013) were included. We obtained Information on cancer diagnosis via linkage to the Korea Central Cancer Registry. Factor analysis was conducted to obtain dietary patterns, and Cox proportional models were used to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for breast cancer risk. For 494,490 person-years, 359 new cases of breast cancer occurred. We identified three major dietary patterns, that explained 23.9% of the total variance based on daily total food intake (g/day) from 37 food groups: the meat dietary pattern (higher intake of bread and red meat), the white rice dietary pattern (higher intake of white rice and lower intake of multi-grain rice), and the other pattern. Women who had higher white rice dietary pattern scores had a 35% higher risk of breast cancer, than did women with lower white rice dietary pattern scores (multivariable HR 1.35; 95% CI 1.00–1.84 for the highest vs. lowest quartile of the white rice dietary pattern scores, p for trend = 0.0384). We found that women who consumed three or more servings of multi-grain rice per day had 33% lower risk of breast cancer than did those who consumed one or less multi-grain rice serving per day among women under 50 years of age (multivariable HR 0.67; 95% CI 0.45–0.99, p for trend = 0.0204). Our study suggests that a multi-grain rice diet may be associated with lower risk of breast cancer in Korean women.
Highlights
The incidence rate of breast cancer varies widely worldwide [1]
We identified three major dietary patterns in the final models, ‘meat dietary pattern’, and ‘white rice dietary pattern’, and the ‘other pattern
No association was observed for the meat dietary pattern and the other pattern. In this large prospective cohort study, we identified three dietary patterns: the ‘meat dietary pattern’, the ‘white rice dietary pattern’, and the ‘other pattern’
Summary
The incidence rate of breast cancer varies widely worldwide [1]. Nutrients 2020, 12, 2273 breast cancer was 92.7% in 2016 [2]. There is growing interest in the potential effect of modifiable factors on breast cancer risk. Several epidemiologic studies have linked the risk of breast cancer with individual foods and nutrients such as fruits and vegetables [3], fats [4], red meat [5], milk [6], fish [7], and dietary supplements containing soy isoflavone [8], with inconsistent results [9]. Foods and nutrients are consumed in combination rather than separately, and the components in these foods may have a synergistic effect on breast cancer risk [10]. Exploration of dietary patterns that potentially reflect possible foods and nutrients working together may overcome the limitation of assessments of individual food items [11]
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