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Girls Who Eat Peanut Butter May Improve Their Breast Health
esearch from the Washington University School of
Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, has shown that girls
aged 9 to 15 years who regularly ate peanut butter or nuts
were 39% less likely to develop benign breast disease by age 30
years. Although noncancerous, benign breast disease increases
the risk of breast cancer developing in later life.1
The findings could offer new insights into reducing breast
cancer risk, according to the study’s coleader Graham Colditz,
MD, DrPH, associate director of prevention and control at
Washington University’s Siteman Cancer Center.
The research was based on the health histories of 9039
girls enrolled in The Growing Up Today Study from 1996 to
2001. From 2005 through 2010, the participants reported on
whether they had been diagnosed with benign breast disease
that had been confirmed by breast biopsy. Girls who ate
peanut butter or nuts 2 times per week were found to be 39%
less likely to develop benign breast disease than those who never
ate them. Researchers also found that beans, lentils, soybeans,
and corn may also help to prevent the condition but that the
consumption of these foods was much lower among the girls,
and therefore the evidence was weaker.
Although previous studies have linked peanut butter, nut,
and vegetable fat consumption to a lower risk of benign breast
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disease, this study was the first to use reports made by girls
during their adolescence rather than by asking adults to recall
their high school diets years later.
Reference
1. Berkey CS, Willett WC, Tamimi RM, Rosner B, Frazier AL, Colditz GA.
Vegetable protein and vegetable fat intakes in pre-adolescent and adolescent
girls, and risk for breast disease in young women. Breast Cancer Res Treat.
2013;141:299-306.
DOI: 10.1002/cncr.28839
Long-Term Survival High for Patients With Low-Grade Gliomas
A
study of children treated for low-grade gliomas, the most
common pediatric brain tumors, found that nearly 90%
were alive after 20 years and that few died of the tumor as
adults. At the same time, children who received radiotherapy as
part of their treatment had significantly lower survival rates than
those who did not. The researchers, from Dana-Farber/Boston
Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in Boston,
Massachusetts, say the results are, to their knowledge, the first
comprehensive, large-scale study of such patients.1
The findings were consistent regardless of whether surgeons
could successfully remove a child’s entire tumor or only part of
it. As a result, the radiotherapy itself may explain the survival
difference, the authors say.
Delivery of radiation has long been linked to a variety
of harmful long-term effects. Many major hospitals have
nearly eliminated treating patients with low-grade gliomas
with radiotherapy, but the amount of radiation used by other
hospitals varies, according to the study’s senior author, Peter
Manley, MD.
The researchers were unable to determine the precise
mechanism driving the association between radiotherapy and
reduced long-term survival, such as second cancers or other
radiation-induced toxicities. Nevertheless, because of the
excellent long-term survival noted among the patients studied,
they suggest that physicians treating patients with pediatric
low-grade glioma should prioritize reducing causes of long-term
toxicity. Dr. Manley adds that multiple options are available
for treating these children and these approaches should be
exhausted before radiotherapy is used.
Dr. Manley and his colleagues analyzed the Surveillance,
Epidemiology, and End Results program data from the National
Cancer Institute on more than 4000 patients diagnosed with a
pediatric low-grade glioma between 1973 and 2008. Although
nearly 90% of pediatric survivors were still alive 20 years after
treatment, only approximately 70% of those treated with
radiotherapy were still alive at that time.
Other factors affecting survival included tumor location
(cerebellum or not), tumor type (pilocytic or not), aggressiveness
of the tumor (grade 1 vs grade 2), year of diagnosis (before or
after 1990), and age of the patient at diagnosis (younger than 2
years vs older than 2 years). These factors were found to have less
of an effect on long-term survival compared with radiotherapy,
according to the team’s multivariate analysis.
Reference
1. Bandopadhayay P, Bergthold G, London WB, et al. Long-term outcome of
4,040 children diagnosed with pediatric low-grade gliomas: an analysis of the
Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. Pediatr Blood
Cancer. 2014;61:1173-1179.
DOI: 10.1002/cncr.28840
Content in this section does not reflect any official policy or medical opinion of the American Cancer Society or of the publisher unless otherwise noted. © American Cancer Society, 2014.
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