Low-fat diet may lower risk of ovarian cancer
A low-fat diet may reduce a postmenopausal woman's risk for ovarian cancer, but only if the diet lasts for many years, a new randomised trial has found.

Researchers randomly assigned 19,541 women to a low-fat regimen reinforced with behavioural modification that included 18 group sessions in the first year and quarterly maintenance sessions after that, along with careful recording of food intake.

A group of 29,294 women consumed their regular diets, which were about 10 percent higher in fat and lower by about one serving a day in fruit and vegetables.

There were no significant differences between the two groups in age, race, body mass index, physical activity level and other variables. For the first four years, there was no difference in cancer rates. But for the next 4.1 years, women on the low-fat diet had a 40 percent reduced risk for ovarian cancer. Although that is a substantial percentage difference, the absolute risk for ovarian cancer is not great. Over the eight years of the study, 57 women in the diet group and 103 in the comparison group got ovarian cancer. Still, "this is not a trivial matter," said Ross L. Prentice, the lead author and director of public health sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle. "About 20,000 women a year die from ovarian cancer. We're happy to be able to say that a dietary change can reduce the risk for a serious disease."
The New York Times