First major study to investigate dairy consumption and cancer risk in Chinese adults has found that greater intake was associated with higher risks of liver cancer and female breast cancer.
First major study to investigate dairy consumption and cancer risk in Chinese adults has found that greater intake was associated with higher risks of liver cancer and female breast cancer.
Overall evidence to date on whether eating dairy products affects the risk of cancer has been inconsistent. Studies on Western populations indicate that dairy products may be associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer and a higher risk of prostate cancer, but have found no clear link for breast or other types of cancer.* These results, however, may not be the same for non-Western populations, where amounts and types of dairy consumption and ability to metabolise dairy products differ greatly.
For instance, in China there is very little consumption of cheese and butter, and the consumption of milk and yoghurt is also far lower than Western populations. In addition, most Chinese adults cannot properly metabolise dairy products due to lack of lactase, a key enzyme for breaking down the milk sugar lactose.**
To establish whether dairy products affect the risk of cancer differently in Chinese people, researchers from Oxford Population Health, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, have today published the results of a new large-scale study in BMC Medicine. This collected data from over 510,000 participants in the China Kadoorie Biobank Study.
Read more at University of Oxford
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