Commentary: Dairy milk intake and breast cancer risk: does an association exist, and what might be the culprit?

In this issue of theIJE, Fraseret al. report findings on soy and dairy milk intake in relation to breast cancer risk in the Adventist Health Study-2 (AHS-2).1 The authors found that soy milk intake was not related to breast cancer risk, whereas higher dairy milk intake was related to a higher risk. This is a well-characterized cohort with a high proportion of vegetarians and vegans (around 36%), making it one of the best cohorts to assess the association between soy intake and breast cancer risk reliably in Western populations. Another related strength of this study is that around 8% of the cohort does not consume dairy milk and there is therefore a large range of intake, which is wider than in most previous prospective studies.2
Source: International Journal of Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research