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NEW YORK, Mar 13 (Reuters Health) - Eating higher amounts of cereal fiber--found in such foods as whole-wheat bread, oats, breakfast cereal, pasta and rice-- may lower the risk of one type of stomach cancer, Swedish scientists say.
According to results published in the February issue of Gastroenterology, people who consumed the highest level of fiber had a 60% lower risk of developing stomach cancer than did those in the lowest intake group. The researchers looked specifically at tumors of the gastric cardia, the upper part of the stomach.
Most of this benefit appeared to be due to cereal fiber, as individuals who ate the most cereal fiber had a 70% lower risk than those who ate the least cereal fiber. Eating fiber from fruit or vegetables had no effect on stomach cancer rates.
Earlier studies suggested that diets rich in fiber can lower the risk of cancer of the upper stomach and esophagus, but researchers had not previously examined the influence of dietary fiber on the two cancers separately, according to Dr. Olof Nyren and associates from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
The authors used information from a nationwide Swedish study of cancers of the cardia of the stomach and the esophagus to explore what dietary factors might influence these cancer rates.
The fiber-rich diet also may lower the risk of cancer of the esophagus, but the protection was much less clear-cut than with stomach cancer. It can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between these two types of cancer in patients, according to an editorial by Dr. Robert Kurtz from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang from UCLA School of Public Health in Los Angeles, California. They note that the new study is important because of its relatively large size, but recommend additional studies to clarify the link between diet and cancer of the stomach.
"The ideal next step," they write, "would be to set up nutritional intervention studies to...evaluate the effect of fiber and other dietary constituents on the cancers that develop around the (junction between the stomach and the esophagus)."
They note that in the case of colorectal cancer, initially promising studies suggesting that fiber could reduce the risk, have not panned out in larger and more involved research.
SOURCE: Gastroenterology 2001;120:387-391,568-570.
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