It has been shown that dietary patterns promoting chronic inflammation, including the empirical dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP), are associated with risk of weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. Empirical dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP) score is a food-based dietary index that can be used to assess the ability of the diet to regulate chronic inflammation.
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among females, with more than 300,000 new cases diagnosed annually in the US. Studies have indicated that overexpression of some pro-inflammation markers in breast tissue are associated with higher percent mammographic density, a well-established risk factor for breast cancer.
Given this, Dr. Shadi Azam, postdoctoral associate in the department of population health sciences, Dr. Rulla Tamimi, chief of the Division of Epidemiology and associate director of population science at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, and colleagues led a study in The Journal of Nutrition to examine the associations between EDIP score and mammographic features, including percent mammographic density, dense area and non-dense area, and measure of grayscale variation. They also evaluated how adiposity accumulation, using body mass index as a proxy, affects those associations.
Researchers assessed data from 4,145 participants without breast cancer in the Nurses’ Health Study I and II. Results indicate a statistically significant inverse association between EDIP score and percent mammographic density. EDIP score is also positively associated with non-dense areas, or fat tissue. The study found that those associations were largely mediated through body mass index. Researchers suggest that more studies are needed to evaluate the relationship between diet-related inflammation, body composition, and fat distribution. This information will allow for improved insight into how dietary patterns with high potential to contribute to chronic systemic inflammation, adiposity, and mammographic density can contribute to breast cancer risk.
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