Healthy Dietary Patterns and the Risk of Breast Cancer: A Review of Current Data

Abstract

There is growing evidence that healthy dietary patterns including Mediterranean, prudent, traditional and plant-food based dietary patterns could have favorable effects in breast cancer prevention but there are inconsistencies in this regard. In the current study we reviewed the current evidences in relation to healthy dietary patterns and the risk of breast cancer. Both positive and negative association between Mediterranean dietary pattern and scores as well as prudent and traditional diet and breast cancer risk were observed in case-control and cohort studies. These conflicting findings might be explained by several issue including different dietary assessment methods, different definitions of Mediterranean dietary pattern and score, measurement errors, race differences, and potential confounding variables adjusted in the models. The healthy dietary patterns with high loading of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes had been mainly accompanied with a considerable reduced risk of breast cancer in different races. It should be noted that menopausal and tumor's hormone receptor status, as well as body mass index of women had determinant role in the association of healthy dietary patterns and breast cancer risk. Protective effects of healthy dietary patterns against breast cancer were mainly observed in women with normal body weight (BMI<25 kg/m 2). Further studies are required to clear the associations of dietary patterns and breast cancer risk.