Colon cancer recurrence, diet linked

Colon cancer kills 52,000 Americans each year.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Colon cancer survivors who eat a “Western” diet high in red meat, fats and refined grains are more than three times as likely to have a recurrence as those who consume a “prudent” diet high in fish, poultry, fruits and vegetables, researchers said Tuesday.

Scientists already knew that avoiding a Western diet could reduce the risk of contracting colon cancer, but this is the first study associating the diet with a recurrence of the disease, Dr. Jeffrey Meyerhardt and his colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Such diets have not been linked to recurrence of any other type of cancer, with the possible exception of breast cancer, for which there have been conflicting results.

Many physicians have been telling colon cancer survivors to avoid a Western diet, said Dr. Lily Lai of the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., who was not involved in the study. The report “at least gives us some data” to support that recommendation, she said.

3rd most common

Colon and rectal cancer combined are the third-most-common form of cancer among men and women in the United States, with nearly 154,000 new cases each year and 52,000 deaths. It is curable by surgery if caught early, and the incidence has been declining because of increased screening.

Meyerhardt and his colleagues studied 1,109 patients with Stage III colon cancer, which is localized to the large bowel area and the lymph nodes near the tumor. All had received successful surgery and were participating in a clinical trial that added chemotherapy. The patients were studied for an average of more than five years.

Overall, 324 patients had a recurrence, and 223 died of their cancers.

The team found that the 20 percent of patients who had the most Westernized diet were 3.25 times as likely to have a recurrence as were the 20 percent who had the most prudent diet.

The results, he added, “suggest that people treated for locally advanced colon cancer can actively improve their odds of survival by their dietary choices.”