Milk and Dairy Products and Colon Cancer

Posted on August 15, 2008
Filed Under Cancer |

Calcium, milk and dairy products and colon cancer risk
Previous epidemiological studies have reported a protective effect of calcium and / or dairy products on colorectal cancer (colon and rectum), but these findings were considered inconsistent.

The authors of this paper, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and dairy products in diet and risk of colorectal adenoma and cancer among French women of the E3N-EPIC prospective study were to investigate the effect of consumption of dairy products and calcium, vitamin D and phosphorus in the diet on adenoma-carcinoma sequence.

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The results show that high consumption of calcium through diet is associated in a meaningful way, ie not due to chance, with a reduced risk of premalignant adenomas or tumors of the large intestine and a lesser tendency to present cancer of the large intestine or rectum.

The high consumption of phosphorus and dairy products also reduces the risk of precancerous tumors but not of the cancer, except to high consumption of milk (although the association was not statistically significant, ie, one can not exclude the possibility of chance in such partnership). There was no protective effect for vitamin D.

The researchers conclude that their data support the hypothesis that calcium, dairy and phosphorus exert a protective effect at certain stages of the transition from adenoma to cancer or premalignant tumor of large intestine.

Besides a diet rich in fiber, high consumption of milk and its derivatives seems to protect the intestine from developing cancer.

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