Dietary Habits, Nutritional Knowledge and Physical Activity Assessment in Early Stage Breast Cancer Patients

The advances in early detection coupled with improvements in treatments have led to an ever increasing number of breast cancer survivors. New methods to improve outcomes, including strategies aimed at improving the quality of life and reducing the risk of other diseases, may complement the currently available treatment options. In particular, interventions targeting diet, weight and physical activity can reduce the risk of cancer occurrence, prevent cancer recurrence, and improve survival and the quality of life. The Women's Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS) and the Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial examined the impact of dietary intervention on disease outcome in patients with early stage breast cancer, but with different results. The Women's Intervention Nutrition Study randomized 2437 women with early stage breast cancer to receive a low-fat dietary intervention or usual care control and it demonstrated that dietary intervention improves disease free-survival of breast cancer patients receiving conventional cancer management. Although these benefit was no longer statistically significant at a longer follow-up, an exploratory subgroup analysis revealed that patients with hormone receptor-negative breast cancer continued to experience benefits from the intervention. The Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial, randomized 3088 women previously treated for early breast cancer, to receive low-fat, high-fruit, vegetable and fiber diet or to the control group. This trial failed to demonstrate a benefit in terms of recurrence rates within the experimental group. Given the discrepancies among the findings of these two large trials, dietary changes are not routinely suggested as part of adjuvant therapies for breast cancer survivors and further research is needed to expand knowledge in this area. This study aims at evaluating dietary habits and nutritional knowledge in patients with early hormone receptor positive and hormone receptor negative breast cancer.