Life and Thoughts of The One Ocean

Red meat link to breast cancer

Women who eat red meat every day are almost twice as likely to develop types of breast cancer, a new study says.

Scientists who monitored 90,000 women found those who ate a high meat diet were much more prone to hormonally reactive breast cancers.

The scientists suggest synthetic hormones used in meat production could be behind the trend, reports the Guardian.

Hormonally reactive breast cancers account for more than half of all breast cancers.

The findings, from Harvard Medical School, are based on tracking women from 1991, when their average age was 36, until 2003.

They completed regular questionnaires to record how often they consumed more than 130 different foods and drinks as scientists tried to establish possible links to cancer.

By the end of the study, 1,021 women had developed breast cancer. Of those, 512 were hormonally reactive.

When the women were assigned to five groups depending on their red meat intake, the researchers found those consuming most had the highest risk of developing this form of cancer.

Women who ate more than one-and-a-half servings of red meat daily had almost double the risk, the findings published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine show.

Eunyoung Cho, who led the research, said: "This study suggests that dietary factors may be related to a woman's chance of developing this type of breast cancer, a disease that is on the rise."

posted by The One Ocean @ 11/20/2006 07:09:00 PM