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Much research has shown that what you eat as well as your genetic make-up probably have some influence on your risk of breast cancer. The study reviewed here looked at how diet and genetics might combine to influence breast cancer risk.

More than 6,000 Chinese women participated in the study. The researchers found that:

• Women who ate the most cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale) were less likely to develop breast cancer after menopause than women who ate the least amount of cruciferous vegetables.
• Women who had a GSTP1 gene with what’s called a Val variant had a higher-than-average risk of post-menopausal breast cancer. But these women with a GSTP1 Val variant got more benefits from eating lots of cruciferous vegetables compared to women who didn’t have a GSTP1 Val variant and ate lots of cruciferous veggies.

Cruciferous vegetables have high levels of compounds that the body turns into isothiocyanates. Researchers think that isothiocyanates may help fight cancer. People with a Val variant of the GSTP1 gene flush the compounds that are turned into isothiocyanates out of their bodies faster than people who don’t have this variant. So, people with the Val variant are less likely to get the anti-cancer benefits of isothiocyanates. It’s possible that women with the Val variant can make up for this lack of isothiocyanates by eating a lot of cruciferous vegetables. This might be why women with the Val variant who ate lots of cruciferous vegetables had a reduced risk of breast cancer.

This research was done in China. Like other Asian countries, the number of breast cancer diagnoses in China has been increasing as more women adopt a typically Western diet and lifestyle. It’s possible that people now are eating fewer cruciferous vegetables, which may be contributing to higher numbers of breast cancer cases.

What you eat is just one of many choices you can make to help keep your breast cancer risk as low as it can be. Visit the breastcancer.org Changes You Can Make to Lower Your Risk page for more information.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Cruciferous vegetables may help lower the risk of developing breast cancer, particularly for women who carry a particular gene variant linked to the disease, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among more than 6,000 Chinese women, those with the highest intake of Chinese cabbage and white turnips had a somewhat lower risk of postmenopausal breast cancer than those with the lowest intake.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, add to evidence that compounds in cruciferous vegetables may help fight cancer.

Chinese cabbage and white turnips are two cruciferous vegetables common in the Chinese diet; in Western diets, the most common cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower and kale. The vegetables contain certain compounds that the body converts into substances called isothiocyanates, which are thought to have anti-cancer effects.

In the current study, high consumption of Chinese cabbage and white turnips was linked to a moderately lower breast cancer risk. But the apparent benefit was stronger among women who carried two copies of a particular variant of a gene called GSTP1.

Among these women, those with the highest intake of any cruciferous vegetables had about half the risk of breast cancer as those who ate the fewest, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Sang-Ah Lee of Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

GSTP1 is an enzyme that helps detoxify the body of potentially cancer-causing substances. Some studies have suggested that having a particular form of the gene — the Val variant — may raise a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

The current study found that women who carried two copies of the Val variant did, in fact, have a higher risk of developing breast cancer before menopause than women who had other variants in the GSTP1 gene.

But the excess risk was cut substantially in those who ate the most cruciferous vegetables.

“We cautiously interpreted this as diet being a factor that may reduce the impact of genetic susceptibility in overall breast cancer risk,” Dr. Jay Fowke, one of the researchers on the work, said in a statement.

It’s possible, according to Fowke and his colleagues, that people who carry two Val variants of the GSTP1 gene excrete the beneficial isothiocyanates more quickly, and eating more cruciferous vegetables helps counter this.

More research, they conclude, is needed to better understand how cruciferous vegetables might modify breast cancer risk.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, March 2008