Higher fibre shown to reduce oestrogen levels

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Higher fibre shown to reduce oestrogen levels

 

19/10/2004 - An international team has demonstrated that women with a

higher intake of dietary fibre have lower circulating oestrogen

levels, a factor associated with lower risk of breast cancer.

 

They say their findings, which offer direct evidence of the

association between fibre and the hormone, could lead to a dietary

strategy for lowering a woman's risk of breast cancer.

 

Breast cancer rates have risen in recent decades to become the most

common cancer among women in the European Union and US. Britain has

one of the highest breast cancer death rates in the world, according

to Breast Cancer Research, with one woman in nine developing the

disease during her lifetime.

 

There have already been several studies investigating the relationship

between dietary fibre and breast cancer but researchers have not been

able to show a true and unequivocal cause-and-effect relationship

between fibre and breast cancer risk.

 

In a new study, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the

University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the University of

Hawaii in Honolulu, and the University of Helsinki in Finland examined

blood oestrogen levels in around 250 Mexican-American women, an ethnic

group in which dietary fibre intake is higher on average than in most

other populations.

 

" Latinas enrolled in the Multiethnic Cohort Study have lower breast

cancer rates than any major racial/ethnic group in the US. Even after

adjusting for known risk factors, their incidence rate is still 20 per

cent less than white women, who have been the focus of the majority of

earlier research and whose dietary fibre intake is generally not that

high, " explained the study first author Kristine Monroe, a

postdoctoral fellow in the Keck School's department of Preventive

Medicine.

 

Dietary fibre intake was quantified by a food frequency questionnaire

administered at the time of the blood draw and by using biomarkers of

dietary fibre intake found in the blood samples.

 

Speaking yesterday at the American Association for Cancer Research

(AACR) conference, 'Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research', the

researchers said they found the two female hormones estrone and

estradiol dropped sharply as dietary fibre intake increased.

 

In addition, as dietary fat intake increased in the women studied, so

did the hormone levels.

 

" However, when dietary fibre and fat are both included in the

statistical model, only dietary fibre remains a significant predictor

of hormone levels, " said Monroe.

 

The next step is to see if a higher intake of dietary fibre in these

women leads to a lower incidence of breast cancer, she added.

 

" This study provides clear evidence of an association between dietary

fibre intake and circulating hormone levels in postmenopausal Latina

women and potentially provides a dietary means for lowering a woman's

risk of breast cancer, " concluded the researchers.

 

Earlier this year a Swedish team reported that postmenopausal women in

the highest quintile of fibre intake had a 40 per cent lower risk of

breast cancer than those with the lowest. Combining high fibre with a

low fat diet reduced the risk even further.