Healthful and Unhealthful Provegetarian Food Patterns and the Incidence of Breast Cancer: results from a Mediterranean cohort
Menée en Espagne auprès de 10 812 femmes (durée médiane de suivi : 11,5 ans), cette étude analyse l'effet d'un régime alimentaire à base de plantes sur le risque de cancer du sein (101 cas)
Introduction: Provegetarian diets, also denoted as predominantly plant-based (but not vegetarian or vegan) diets or plant-forward diets, have been associated with health benefits. However, a distinction is needed between high- and low-quality provegetarian dietary patterns (PVG). We sought to examine potential associations between PVG indices and breast cancer (BC) incidence. Methods: We assessed 10,812 women in the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) cohort. We calculated an overall PVG pattern from a validated semi-quantitative food-frequency questionnaire following the methods proposed by Martínez-Gonzalez et al [1], assigning positive scores (based on quintiles) to plant foods and reversing the quintile scores for animal foods. Participants were categorized according to tertiles of the overall score. We also calculated a healthful PVG (hPVG) and an unhealthful PVG (uPVG) following the methods proposed by Satija et al [2]. Results: After 11.5 years of median follow-up, 101 incident BC cases, confirmed by medical records, were observed. A significant inverse association with BC [HR T2 vs T1 0.55 (95% CI 0.32, 0.95)] was identified for a modest overall PVG, but not for the hPVG and uPVG separately. Nevertheless, the highest tertile was not associated with BC. Conclusions: In this large prospective cohort study, a moderate adherence to a PVG might decrease the risk of BC. Further studies should replicate and expand these results to other racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups.