a healthy diet can limit the worsening of the disease

There is a link between diet and cancer: certain foods are known for their carcinogenic risk. But other products may have beneficial effects on health. Researchers from John Hopkins University in the United States demonstrate this in JAMA Oncology. They reveal that a healthy diet can limit the risk of prostate cancer getting worse.

Prostate cancer: 20 years of data to understand its link with diet

This disease can be classified into five grades. The first corresponds to a grade where cancer cells are present only in the prostate, without metastases. Grade 5 is the most serious form of the pathology: the cancer cells are said to be “abnormal” and can grow and spread throughout the body. “Many men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer wonder what changes they can make to reduce the risk of their tumor becoming more aggressive.says Bruce Trock, co-author of the study, professor of urology, epidemiology and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The role of food and nutrition is one of the most frequently asked questions.” To answer this question, scientists analyzed twenty years of medical data and information on patients’ eating habits.

How to study the effects of diet on prostate cancer?

Around 900 men participated in this study. All had been diagnosed with grade 1 prostate cancer at the start of the research. They completed a questionnaire on eating habits: this allowed the researchers to establish an HEI score, to healthy eating indexan index of healthy eating. “HEI is a validated measure of overall diet quality“, specifies Zhuo Tony Su, lead author. They also calculated the scores of the dietary inflammatory index (DII) and the energy-adjusted DII (E-DII).”The DII and E-DII scores assess the inflammatory or anti-inflammatory potential of any diet, so higher scores indicate a diet that may cause more inflammation, which in turn, may contribute to the development and progression of cancer prostate“, adds the scientist.

Demonstrated links between worsening prostate cancer and diet

In total, 187 men were reclassified to a higher grade, including 55 to grade 3.”The higher the HEI and E-HEI scores, the higher the risk of low-grade prostate cancer progressing to higher-severity disease.”note the authors. For patients with a healthy diet, each 12.5 point increase in HEI score was associated with a 15% reduction in cancer reclassification to grade 2, and 30% to other grades. “Our results should be useful in counseling men who are ready to change their behaviors, including the quality of their diet, explains Christian Pavlovich, co-author of the study. However, to validate the association between a higher quality diet and a reduced risk of prostate cancer progression, further studies with more diverse populations are needed.“