Benefits of Dietary Management in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute of Cancer Research recommendations include guidance on diet, nutrition, and weight management for people with cancer. However, for women diagnosed with breast cancer there is a lack of comprehensive analyses on the effects of dietary interventions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of changes in dietary behavior and body composition on breast cancer development. A comprehensive and systematic literature search of 12 electronic databases was undertaken on January 27, 2021 to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of dietary interventions for breast cancer. The Cochrane risk bias assessment tool was used to evaluate the quality of the trials identified with the data analyzed by Review Manager 5.3 software. The results showed that dietary interventions probably did not modify servings of fruit (P = 0.08), fat intake (P = 0.10), total cholesterol level (P = 0.82), body weight (P = 0.08), waist circumference (P = 0.15), or waist-to-hip ratio (P = 0.32). However, a significant reduction in body mass index (P = 0.03), and hip circumference (P = 0.03), and improvement in energy intake (P = 0.02), vegetable servings (P < 0.0001), and fiber intake (P < 0.00001) were observed. Future studies should investigate the benefits of exercise in combination with dietary interventions in breast cancer patients.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01635581.2021.1957129

Acknowledgments

Not applicable

Declaration of Interest Statements

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

Not applicable. As this is a systematic review reporting on existing data, ethics approval was not required.

Consent for Publication

All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Availability of Data and Materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Authors’ Contributions

The conception and design of the review: SRW, TY, WMQ, AMS, ZHZ, XFL.

Literature retrieval: SRW, TY.

Literature screening: SRW, TY, ZHZ.

Quality assessment: SRW, TY, AMS, ZHZ.

Data analysis: SRW, WMQ, AMS.

Writing-original draft: SRW.

Writing-review & editing: SRW, TY, WMQ, AMS, ZHZ, XFL.

All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was obtained for this study.