Poor diet can influence recurrence of bowel cancer

It has long been known that dietary factors play a part in the development of colon cancer, but the influence of diet on patients with established disease is not known. The authors of this paper set up a study to determine the association of diet with recurrence of cancer and deaths in colon cancer survivors.

They recruited 1 009 patients with stage III colon cancer who were involved in a trial of chemotherapy between April 1999 and May 2001. Patients were asked to report on their diet using a standardised questionnaire. The authors identified two major dietary patterns: what they called prudent and the other Western. A “prudent” diet was one in which there was a high intake of fruits and vegetables, poultry and fish. The Western diet was typically one characterised by high intakes of meat, fat, refined grains and desserts.

They found that, during around five years of follow-up, 324 patients had cancer recurrence and 223 died with that recurrence and 28 died without cancer recurrence. A higher intake of a Western style diet after diagnosis of cancer was associated with a significantly worse disease-free survival, while the prudent diet did not show the same association.

Meyerhardt JA et al. JAMA 2007; 298: 754

See the abstract of the article here http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/7/754