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Dairy consumption and risk of breast cancer: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

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Abstract

Epidemiologic findings are inconsistent regarding risk for breast cancer related to dairy consumption. We performed a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies to examine the association between diary product consumption and risk of breast cancer. A PubMed database search through January 2011 was performed for relevant studies. We included prospective cohort studies that reported relative risks with 95% confidence intervals for the association of dairy consumption and breast cancer risk. A random effects model was used to calculate the summary risk estimates. We identified 18 prospective cohort studies eligible for analysis, involving 24,187 cases and 1,063,471 participants. The summary relative risk of breast cancer for the highest intake of total dairy food compared with the lowest was 0.85 (95% confidence interval: 0.76–0.95), with evidence of heterogeneity (P = 0.01, I 2 = 54.5%). For milk consumption, the summary relative risk was 0.91 (95% confidence interval: 0.80–1.02), and substantial heterogeneity was observed (P = 0.003, I 2 = 59.7%). Subgroup analyses based on limited numbers of studies suggested that the associations were somewhat stronger for low-fat dairy intake than for high-fat dairy intake and for premenopausal women than for postmenopausal women. There was a significant dose–response relationship of total dairy food, but not milk, consumption with breast cancer risk. Little evidence of publication bias was observed. In conclusion, findings of the present meta-analysis indicate that increased consumption of total dairy food, but not milk, may be associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30771808 to Li-Qiang Qin). The study sponsors had no role in the design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data or in the writing or decision to submit the manuscript. Jia-Yi Dong and Li-Qiang Qin were responsible for study design, data acquisition, statistical analysis, and results interpretation. Jia-Yi Dong prepared the manuscript. All authors critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Radiation Medicine and Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Jia-Yi Dong & Li-Qiang Qin

  2. Department of Epidemiology, School of Radiation Medicine and Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Lijun Zhang

  3. Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

    Ka He

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  1. Jia-Yi Dong
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Correspondence to Li-Qiang Qin.

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Dong, JY., Zhang, L., He, K. et al. Dairy consumption and risk of breast cancer: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Breast Cancer Res Treat 127, 23–31 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-011-1467-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-011-1467-5

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