Prediagnosis Soy Food Consumption and Lung Cancer Survival in Women

Abstract

We recently reported an inverse association between soy food intake and lung cancer risk among nonsmoking women. The effect size for aggressive lung cancers was larger than that observed for other types of lung cancer. Therefore, we hypothesized that soy consumption may favorably affect the overall survival of patients with lung cancer. This analysis included 444 women with incident lung cancer identified from the Shanghai Women's Health Study. Prediagnosis soy food intake was assessed at enrollment and reassessed 2 years later. Proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the association between soy food intake and overall survival. Of the 444 patients with lung cancer, 318 died during follow-up. Initial analyses including all patients showed that higher intake of soy food was associated with better overall survival after adjusting for demographic and lifestyle characteristics and other nonclinical factors. Larger effect sizes for the association were found after additional adjustment for tumor stage and treatment in analyses including 301 patients with data available on these clinical factors. Compared with the median intake of soy food, fully adjusted hazard ratios for total mortality associated with the 10th, 30th, 70th, and 90th percentiles of intake were 1.81 (95% CI, 1.26 to 2.59), 1.25 (95% CI, 1.09 to 1.42), 0.88 (95% CI, 0.80 to 0.97), and 0.89 (95% CI, 0.68 to 1.16), respectively. Similar inverse associations were observed for dietary isoflavone intake. This study suggests, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, that, among women with lung cancer, prediagnosis intake of soy food is associated with better overall survival.