Med Diet Adherence Associated with Lower Mortality Risk for Cancer Survivors

Newly pub­lished research has found that closely adher­ing to the Mediterranean diet might sig­nif­i­cantly reduce both all-cause and car­dio­vas­cu­lar mor­tal­ity rates among can­cer sur­vivors.

The study found that greater adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet was asso­ci­ated with a 30 per­cent reduc­tion in the risk of death from any cause and nearly a 60 per­cent reduc­tion in car­dio­vas­cu­lar mor­tal­ity among can­cer sur­vivors.

“The impact of adher­ing to the Mediterranean diet is sub­stan­tial. This was assessed inde­pen­dently of the ther­a­pies each patient received for their tumor,” said Marialaura Bonaccio, a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular and Nutritional Epidemiology at the Neuromed Mediterranean Neurological Institute in Italy and co-author of the study.

The research let­ter, authored by a group of Italian sci­en­tists and pub­lished in JACC CardiOncology, also explored the shared risk fac­tors between car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and can­cer.

“Many indi­vid­u­als who develop tumors also go on to develop car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases,” Bonaccio told Olive Oil Times. ​“Well-doc­u­mented evi­dence sug­gests com­mon risk fac­tors for these two con­di­tions.”

Both con­di­tions share meta­bolic risk fac­tors such as inflam­ma­tion and oxida­tive stress. The Mediterranean diet, rich in anti-inflam­ma­tory and antiox­i­dant foods, addresses these shared path­ways.

The research used data from the broad Moli-sani study, which tracked approx­i­mately 25,000 adults from the Molise region of Italy for over a decade.

This new research focused on 802 par­tic­i­pants, around 60 years old, who had a his­tory of can­cer at the start of the study. Their dietary habits and health out­comes were mon­i­tored over 13 years.

“All of the indi­vid­u­als we included had a tumor at the time they joined the Moli-sani study, regard­less of the type of tumor,” Bonaccio said. ​“While ear­lier stud­ies focused on the dietary impacts on spe­cific types of tumors, our study had the advan­tage of extend­ing the results to all can­cer sur­vivors.”

Participants were cat­e­go­rized based on their adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet, mea­sured using a semi-quan­ti­ta­tive food fre­quency ques­tion­naire, and obtained a MedDiet score.

“Consistent with pre­vi­ous lit­er­a­ture, we found that the most sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits were observed in those who strictly adhered to the Mediterranean diet,” Bonaccio said. ​“Occasional adher­ence did not yield mea­sur­able ben­e­fits.”

According to the research, patients with higher adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet tended to have a higher socioe­co­nomic sta­tus and were more likely to be phys­i­cally active. Their all-cause mor­tal­ity rate was 32 per­cent lower than the other patients exam­ined by the researchers.

During the 12.7 years of fol­low-up, a total of 248 all-cause deaths were recorded, includ­ing 59 car­dio­vas­cu­lar deaths and 140 from can­cer.

Researchers acknowl­edged some lim­i­ta­tions to the study, as it is an obser­va­tional study, mean­ing causal­ity can­not be inferred directly. They also noted how self-reported dietary intake might be sub­ject to mis­re­port­ing.

“It was a small group of a given age, and that pre­vented us from obtain­ing spe­cific data on can­cer types or dif­fer­ent impacts at dif­fer­ent ages,” Bonaccio said.

According to Bonaccio, one of the study’s high­lights is that it relates specif­i­cally to a Mediterranean pop­u­la­tion.

“A lot of research con­ducted in other coun­tries eval­u­ates the impact of the Mediterranean diet, but it is very inter­est­ing to mea­sure them in a Mediterranean con­text,” she said.

“Mediterranean pop­u­la­tions have a cul­ture in which foods are com­bined in a cer­tain way,” Bonaccio added. ​“In Italy, we never talk about pasta or legumes alone, as they are always com­bined. The way food is cooked enhances the nutri­tional prop­er­ties of foods.”

On top of that, strict adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet also means avoid­ing most ultra-processed prod­ucts.

“Taking the time needed to pre­pare a meal, trans­form­ing at home the fresh pro­duce, using qual­ity prod­ucts such as olive oil, all of this does not hap­pen if one looks for ready-to-eat off-the-shelf prod­ucts,” Bonaccio explained.

The Italian sci­en­tist noted how the Mediterranean diet might play a more sig­nif­i­cant role in the future of nutri­tion.

“We are see­ing more and more peo­ple diag­nosed with can­cer,” Bonaccio said. ​“That might come from improved diag­nos­tic tools, but it also tells us that more and more peo­ple will need to asso­ciate a healthy diet with their treat­ments.”

While more research is needed, Bonaccio also stressed the sig­nif­i­cant stud­ies cur­rently being con­ducted, high­light­ing the role the Mediterranean diet and olive oil might play in the health of can­cer patients.

“When we see that Mediterranean diet might reduce by 60 per­cent fatal stroke events in these patients, and that is just an exam­ple taken from our study, that tells us how this might be a good start­ing point for who­ever has to deal with those dis­eases,” Bonaccio con­cluded.