Women who eat large amounts of red meat may face an increased risk of developing breast cancer, researchers warned today.
An American analysis suggests that women who eat mainly poultry enjoy a significantly reduced risk of disease compared with meat-eaters.
Women who eat the most red meat face a 22% increased risk of developing breast cancer, researchers say.
And every additional serving of red meat increased the risk by 13%, according to the study, reported in the British Medical Journal.
In contrast every additional service of chicken or other poultry in place of red meat cut the risk by 17%.
Researchers analysed the lifestyles of more than 88,000 female nurses, tracking their diets from the teenaged years up to the age of 45.
Over a 20-year period, some 2,830 women developed breast cancer.
Researcher Maryam Farvid, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, writes that eating red meat early in adult life "may be a risk factor for breast cancer, and replacing red meat with a combination of legumes, poultry, nuts and fish may reduce the risk of breast cancer."
* A second piece of research based on the same nurses suggests that numbers of moles on the skin may help indicate breast cancer risk.
Researchers found that women with 15 or more moles on their left arm were 35% more likely to develop the disease than those with no moles – an increase in risk of nearly three percentage points.
The findings are reported in PLoS Medicine.
The researchers say it is possible that moles are triggered by the same underlying factors – such as hormones – that cause breast cancer.
BMJ 11 June 2014 [abstract]
PLoS Med 10 June 2014; 11(6): e1001659. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001659
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