Breast cancer survivors benefit from heart-healthy diet
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Key takeaways:
- Patients on a heart-healthy diet when diagnosed with breast cancer had lower risk for cardiac arrest and heart failure.
- Future studies should assess benefits of shifting to a heart-healthy diet after diagnosis.
Women with newly diagnosed breast cancer who consumed a heart-healthy diet at the time of their diagnosis had a lower risk for developing heart disease, results from a prospective study published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum showed.
With breast cancer being the most diagnosed malignancy among U.S. women and heart disease the most common cause of death, the results provide insight into a potentially life-extending approach as the first study to evaluate the relationship between diet and heart disease among women with recently diagnosed breast cancer, according to researchers.
“Many people are not aware that breast cancer survivors have a higher risk for developing heart disease than women who have not had breast cancer, or that women who are alive 5 years after their breast cancer diagnosis are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than of breast cancer,” Isaac Ergas, PhD, MPH, MFA, a staff scientist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, told Healio. “We looked at five types of healthy dietary patterns,” he added. “I was surprised that we found that patients whose diets most closely aligned with the dietary approaches to stop hypertension (DASH) eating plan at the time of their diagnosis had a cardiovascular disease risk that was much lower than patients whose diets were least aligned. Furthermore, it appeared that DASH provided more overall benefit compared with the other types of healthy dietary patterns we reviewed.”
Background, methods
Women with breast cancer are at high risk for cardiovascular disease compared with women without breast cancer. Whether a heart-healthy diet at the time of breast cancer diagnosis can lower cardiovascular disease risk has not been investigated; therefore, researchers conducted cohort analysis to determine potential associations between high diet quality at time of breast cancer diagnosis and lower risk for cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease-related death.
The study included 3,415 patients from the Pathway Study — a prospective cohort of women previously diagnosed with invasive breast cancer through Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
Women received their diagnoses between 2005 and 2013 and had follow-up through Dec. 31, 2012.
Researchers determined scores related to five diet quality indices consistent with healthy eating at time of diagnosis; researchers also categorized scores into ascending quartiles of concordance for each diet quality index.
Results
Researchers determined the DASH diet quality index to be associated with lower risk for heart failure (HR = 0.53; 95% CI, 0.33-0.87), arrhythmia (HR = 0.77; 95% CI, 0.62-0.94), cardiac arrest (HR = 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61-0.96), valvular heart disease (HR = 0.79; 95% CI, 0.64-0.98), venous thromboembolic disease (HR = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.6-0.93) and cardiovascular disease-related death (HR =0.7; 95% CI, 0.5-0.99) when comparing the highest with the lowest quartiles.
Researchers also reported inverse associations between healthy plant-based dietary index and heart failure (HR = 0.6; 95% CI, 0.39-0.94), as well as the Mediterranean dietary index and arrhythmia (HR = 0.74; 95% CI, 0.6-0.93).
Next steps
The results, according to researchers, help oncologists provide breast cancer survivors with crucial information about the importance of dietary choices and their impact on cardiovascular risk after beating an initial breast cancer diagnosis.
“Our findings highlight how important it is that health care providers continue to talk to breast cancer survivors about diet quality, not only to reduce their risk for breast cancer recurrence, but to reduce their risk for developing cardiovascular disease,” Ergas told Healio.
“There is a need for more studies that look at the impact of diet after a cancer diagnosis, both for reducing the risk for recurrence and reducing the risk for heart disease,” he added. “We also need to identify the best way for doctors to learn what their patients’ diets look like and how to recommend changes that might be beneficial.”
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