Healthy Diet May Curb Heart Disease Risk in Cancer Survivors

TOPLINE Cancer survivors who adhered to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and other healthy eating patterns showed as much as a one-third lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease over 12 years vs their peers who did not follow those dietary patterns. METHODOLOGY Research shows that cancer survivors have a higher-than-average risk of cardiovascular disease, including those who were never exposed to potentially cardiotoxic chemotherapy or radiation.

Whether healthy eating helps mitigate that risk is unclear. To investigate, researchers analyzed data from 8716 cancer survivors in the UK Biobank who were free of CVD at baseline and completed at least one 24-hour dietary recall assessment. Participants' mean age was 59 years, and the the most common cancer types were breast (31.4%), prostate (9.8%), and colorectal (8.3%).

The researchers calculated scores for several dietary patterns, including DASH, the Alternate Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010), the Mediterranean diet, Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, and “healthy” low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets. The primary outcome was incident CVD, ascertained through hospital inpatient records and death registers.

Analyses adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, BMI, physical activity, smoking, socioeconomic status, blood pressure, lipids , diabetes, cancer onset age, and polygenic risk score for CVD. TAKEAWAY During a median follow-up of 12.3 years, there were 1116 incident CVD events, including 858 cases of ischemic heart disease , 251 cases of heart failure , and 181 strokes.

The DASH and AHEI-2010 diets were most strongly associated with reduced CVD risk. Comparing the highest vs lowest quintile of adherence, adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were 0.65 for DASH and 0.63 for AHEI-2010. The Mediterranean diet (HR, 0.72) and MIND diet (HR, 0.74) were associated with similar magnitudes of benefit.

AHEI-2010 demonstrated the strongest associations with reduced risk for ischemic heart disease (HR, 0.63) and stroke (HR, 0.49), while DASH was most strongly associated with reduced heart failure risk (HR, 0.54). An analysis of food groups found that higher consumption of vegetables, whole grains, legumes, fish, and dairy were all associated with lower overall CVD risk.

At age 45, participants with the highest adherence to healthy dietary patterns gained an estimated 1.7 to 3.3 additional years of life expectancy compared with those with the lowest adherence, with MIND associated with the longest gain (3.3 years). IN PRACTICE "Adherence to healthy dietary patterns is associated with reduced CVD risk among cancer survivors, underscoring the potential for diet to support cardio-oncology care," the study authors wrote.

SOURCE The study was led by Qing-Yuan Gao, PhD, of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. It was published online in JACC: Advances . LIMITATIONS The absence of longitudinal dietary data precluded assessment of how temporal changes in dietary habits influence CVD risk over follow-up.

Incident CVD events were ascertained through linkage to hospital admission records and national death registries, potentially underestimating disease incidence. The UK Biobank comprises predominantly white European participants with inherent healthy volunteer bias, potentially limiting generalizability.

DISCLOSURES This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan Project. The authors reported no relevant conflicts of interest. This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process.

Human editors reviewed this content before publication.