Dietary non-enzymatic antioxidant capacity and risk of breast cancer: the Swedish National March Cohort

TL;DR

Higher dietary antioxidant capacity, especially from fruits and vegetables, may lower breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women.

Contribution

This study explores the link between total dietary antioxidant capacity and breast cancer risk in a large Swedish cohort.

Findings

Higher total NEAC was associated with a 15% lower risk of overall breast cancer.

NEAC from fruits and vegetables showed a 21% lower risk of breast cancer.

The association was stronger for post-menopausal breast cancer but weakened after imputing missing data.

Abstract

Total dietary antioxidant capacity has been associated with a lower risk of breast cancer​, but the supporting evidence is limited. We investigated the association between dietary Non-Enzymatic Antioxidant Capacity (NEAC), measuring the total antioxidant potential of the diet, and the risk of breast cancer.

We followed 24,950 women recruited into the Swedish National March Cohort through record linkages to Swedish health registries from 1997 until 2016. Total NEAC was computed based on the baseline 96-item food frequency questionnaire. Three measures of dietary NEAC were assessed: total NEAC, NEAC from fruits and vegetables and NEAC from grains. We fitted multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models to compute hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to quantify the association between dietary NEAC and risk of overall, as well as pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer.

During a median follow-up of 19.2 years, 1142/24,950 women were diagnosed with breast cancer (136/10,826 pre- and 975/21,152 post-menopausal). Findings indicated a trend in the association between total NEAC and the hazard of overall breast cancer (highest vs. lowest quartile: adjusted HR = 0.85, 95% CI 0.69-1.04; p-value for Wald test = 0.138, p-value for trend = 0.048). The association was more evident for post-menopausal breast cancer (HR = 0.76, 95% CI 0.60-0.96; p-value for trend = 0.010). However, when missing data were imputed, the magnitude of the association was found to be weaker in terms of hazard reduction and no statistically significant associations were observed but the direction of the associations remained consistent (overall: HR = 0.89 (0.74-1.08), p-value for trend = 0.091; post-menopausal: HR = 0.84 (0.69-1.03), p-value for trend = 0.057). When distinguishing NEAC based on food sources, breast cancer hazard was inversely associated with NEAC from fruits and vegetables (HR = 0.79, 95% CI 0.64-0.97; p-value for trend = 0.019), but not with NEAC from grains (HR = 1.05, 95% CI 0.86-1.29; p-value for trend = 0.630).

These results suggest an inverse association between dietary total antioxidant capacity and the risk of breast cancer, particularly in post-menopausal women, which seems to be driven by the consumption of fruits and vegetables. However, sensitivity analysis on imputed covariates did not fully confirm our findings, indicating the need for future confirmatory research.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-025-14658-z.

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