Dietary Fat and the Risk of Breast Cancer

Abstract
Dietary fat has been suggested as a risk factor for breast cancer in women, but the available data on humans are sparse and inconsistent. In 1980, 89,538 U.S. registered nurses who were 34 to 59 years of age and had no history of cancer completed a previously validated dietary questionnaire designed to measure individual consumption of total fat, saturated fat, linoleic acid, and cholesterol, as well as other nutrients. In a subsample of 173 participants studied in detail, those in the highest quintile of fat intake consumed a mean of 44 percent of calories from fat, as compared with 32 percent for those in the lowest quintile.