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Is soy food helpful or harmful for women with breast cancer? Studies have yielded mixed results. A new study published today suggests that breast cancer survivors may benefit from eating moderate amounts of soy products.

In a large group of breast cancer survivors in China, researchers found that a higher intake of soy food — up to 11 grams daily — was associated with a lower risk of death or recurrence of breast cancer during follow up. (For comparison, a slice of bread generally weighs between 30 and 40 grams.)

“The key take home message from our study is that moderate amount of soy food intake is safe and may reduce risk of mortality and recurrence among women with breast cancer,” Dr. Xiao Ou Shu, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee noted in an email to Reuters Health.

Soy foods are rich in compounds called isoflavones — a major group of plant-derived phytoestrogens possessing both estrogen-like and anti-estrogen actions.

Eating soy has been linked to a reduced of risk of breast cancer in some studies, while other studies have suggested that soy may help breast cancer cells grow and multiply, the study team explains in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To investigate further, Shu and colleagues analyzed the dietary habits of more than 5,000 women aged 20 to 75 years who were diagnosed with breast cancer between March 2002 and April 2006 and were followed up through June 2009 as part of the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study.

Among 5,033 women who had surgery to remove the breast cancer, 444 women died and 534 had recurrences or breast cancer-related deaths during a median of 3.9 years.

Women who ate the most soy protein had a 29 percent lower risk of dying during the study period, and a 32 percent lower risk of having their cancer return compared to women who ate the least amount of soy protein.

At 4 years, death rates were 10.3 percent and 7.4 percent for women with the lowest and highest intakes of soy protein, and recurrence rates at 4 years were 11.2 percent and 8.0 percent, respectively.

The benefits of soy food intake on death and breast cancer recurrence peaked at 11 grams per day, the researchers note. “No additional benefits on mortality and recurrence were observed with higher intakes of soy food,” they wrote.

Eating soy was beneficial regardless of whether the women’s breast tumors were driven by estrogen (that is, estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer) or were “estrogen receptor-negative.”

The benefits of soy were also seen in both users and nonusers of tamoxifen, a drug commonly used to treat and prevent breast cancer. Prior studies have suggested that soy isoflavones may interact with tamoxifen, and both beneficial and possibly harmful interactions have been reported.

The authors of a commentary on the study caution that while it provides important information, there are several concerns, including differences in the quality, type and quantity of soy food intake between Chinese and American women.

For one thing, the average isoflavone intake in Chinese women is 47 milligrams per day compared with 1 to 6 milligrams per day for American women, Dr. Rachel Ballard-Barbash, of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland and Dr. Marian L. Neuhouser, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, point out.

Larger studies, they say, are needed to understand the effects of these foods among diverse subsets of women with breast cancer.

In the meantime, they add, women with breast cancer should know that “soy foods are safe to eat and that these foods may offer some protective benefit for long-term health.”

“Patients with breast cancer can be assured that enjoying a soy latte or indulging in pad thai with tofu causes no harm and, when consumed in plentiful amounts, may reduce risk of disease recurrence,” Ballard-Barbash and Neuhouser advise.

They point out, however, that any potential benefits are from soy foods. Inferences should not be made about the risks or benefits of soy-containing dietary supplements.

Certain dietary supplements appear to affect the development of colorectal cancer or its recurrence, two new studies suggest.

In one study, researchers from the U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences found that eating a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids cut the risk of developing colorectal cancer by nearly 40 percent. In the other study, from cancer researchers in Italy, consumption of a dietary supplement containing selenium was found to reduce the chances of having polyps recur by a similar amount.

Both studies were to be presented Dec. 7 in Houston at a conference on cancer prevention sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research.

In the selenium study, 411 people, 25 to 75 years old, who’d had one or more colorectal polyps removed took either a supplement or a placebo. The supplement, described as an antioxidant compound, contained 200 micrograms of selenomethionnine (a combination of selenium and methionnine), 30 milligrams of zinc, 6,000 international units of vitamin A, 180 milligrams of vitamin C and 30 milligrams of vitamin E.

Participants had a colonoscopy one year, three years and five years after starting the regimen.

Polyps recurred in 4.2 percent of those taking the supplement, compared with 7.2 percent of the placebo group. Overall, the study found, people taking the supplement had about a 40 percent reduction in risk for a return of polyps.

The researchers estimated that, after 15 years, about 48 percent of those taking the supplement would still be free of polyps, versus about 30 percent of those not taking the supplement.

Polyps, or adenoma, are benign growths on the large bowel. Though only a small proportion progress to become cancer, about 70 to 80 percent of colorectal cancer cases begin as polyps, according to the American Association for Cancer Research. About one in four people, most older than 60, will have at least one adenoma.

Selenium is found in soil, and human consumption comes by eating plants that have absorbed the nutrient or fish or animals that have eaten plants as part of their diet. “The content of selenium in the food depends on the soil content of this trace element, and in the same country there are areas at high, adequate or low content of selenium in the soil,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Luigina Bonelli, head of the unit of secondary prevention and screening at the National Institute for Cancer Research in Genoa, Italy.

Earlier research had suggested that selenium can inhibit cell proliferation in the colon and rectum, Bonelli said.

Michele Forman, a professor of epidemiology at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that, though the findings are interesting, it’s impossible to tell if the benefit was attributable to the selenium or to the other vitamins and minerals included in the supplement.

“You really don’t know if it’s the selenium or some combination that reduces risk of recurrence,” Forman said.

In addition, the daily dosages of vitamins A and E taken by the participants were higher than the recommended daily allowances, Forman added. High levels of such vitamins can be detrimental, she said.

In the omega-3 study, U.S. researchers surveyed 1,509 whites and 369 blacks about their dietary habits in the past year. About half of the participants had colorectal cancer.

Among the white participants, those whose diets were in the highest fourth of omega-3 fatty acid consumption were 39 percent less likely to have colorectal cancer than those in the lowest fourth. However, for reasons the authors said they did not know, no association was noted between omega-3s and a reduction of colorectal cancer risk among black participants. The disease occurs at a higher rate among blacks than whites.

“Our finding clearly supports the evidence from previous experimental and clinical studies showing that long-chain omega-3 fatty acids inhibit tumor growth,” said the study’s lead author, Sangmi Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Kim said the research supports boosting omega-3 intake through diet or perhaps by taking an omega-3 supplement. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish, especially oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring, anchovies, sardines and tuna. Plant-based sources include flax and flaxseed oil, Brussels sprouts, soybeans and soybean oil, canola oil, spinach, walnuts and kiwi.

Previous studies have suggested that omega-3 fatty acids act as anti-inflammatory agents and help prevent cancer. But in the new study, Forman noted, participants were asked about their diets after they had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer so it’s possible that their recollections were not fully accurate.

In addition, she said, it’s possible that the benefit was not the result of omega-3s. Those who ate more fish might have had a healthier diet overall, she said.

“Were they eating a salmon-and-broccoli diet or a hamburger-and-french-fry diet?” Forman asked. “We don’t know enough to say that it’s truly the effect of the omega-3s.”

High-flow oxygen appears to be an effective treatment for cluster headaches, British researchers have found.

People with cluster headaches can have as many as eight per day in bouts that last for weeks or months. The current treatment is injection with the drug sumatriptan, but frequent use of the drug isn’t recommended because of the risk of adverse effects. High-flow oxygen is also used to treat cluster headaches, but its use is limited because of a lack of good quality controlled studies.

This new study included 76 adult patients, aged 18 to 70, with either episodic cluster headache (57) or chronic cluster headache (19). During four cluster headache episodes, the patients alternatively received high-flow oxygen (inhaled oxygen at 100 percent, 12 liters per minute, delivered by face mask, for 15 minutes at the start of the attack) or placebo (high-flow air).

The study found that 78 percent of patients reported being pain-free or having adequate relief within 15 minutes of receiving high-flow oxygen, compared with 20 percent of patients after they received high-flow air. High-flow oxygen also provided better pain relief at 30 and 60 minutes.

No serious harmful side effects were reported after high-flow oxygen treatment, according to the report published in the Dec. 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“To our knowledge, this is the first adequately powered trial of high-flow oxygen compared with placebo, and it confirms clinical experience and current guidelines that inhaled oxygen can be used as an acute attack therapy for episodic and chronic cluster headache,” wrote Anna S. Cohen, of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and colleagues.

“This work paves the way for further studies to optimize the administration of oxygen and its more widespread use as an acute attack treatment in cluster headache, offering an evidence-based alternative to those who cannot take triptan agents,” they concluded.

Could the music of the 18th century classical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart help tiny infants born today?

Yes, suggests an Israeli study that found that listening for just 30 minutes a day helped premature babies use less energy, which may help them grow faster.

“Within 10 minutes of listening to Mozart music, healthy infants [born prematurely] had a 10 percent to 13 percent reduction of their resting energy expenditure,” the study authors wrote. “We speculate that this effect of music on resting energy expenditure might explain, in part, the improved weight gain that results from this Mozart effect.”

The findings were published online Monday in Pediatrics, and are slated to appear in the January print issue of the journal.

In the 1990s, researchers released a small study that found that when adults listened to a Mozart sonata they performed better on intelligence tests. Numerous studies have been done since, including studies on premature infants that have found the “Mozart effect” can decrease the heart rate, lower stress hormone levels and ease distressed behavior in premature infants, according to background information in the new study. Babies exposed to music have also shown an increase in their levels of oxygen and weight gain.

However, none of these studies have been able to look at how the music might be causing these changes.

To get an idea of how Mozart’s music might help weight gain, the researchers designed a prospective, randomized trial that included 20 healthy babies who were born prematurely. The babies weren’t eating on their own, but instead were being tube-fed consistent quantities of food.

The babies were randomly assigned to listen to no music or to Mozart for 30 minutes for two consecutive days.

During the first 10 minutes, the resting energy expenditure was similar in both groups. But during the next 10 minutes, the researchers noted a change in the babies who were exposed to Mozart — their resting energy expenditure decreased, and the effect continued through the next 10-minute period as well. Overall, there was a 10 percent to 13 percent drop in resting energy expenditure.

“When you’re born early, lots of the pathways in the brain are still being laid down and developing, and then babies are put in an environment where there are lots of unfamiliar sounds and other stimuli, which may cause sensory overload. Music may help decrease those noxious influences,” said Dr. Cheryl Cipriani, director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Scott & White Memorial Hospital, in Temple, Texas. “It’s an area that needs further explanation.”

Dr. Beverly Brozanski, clinical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, said that “developmental inputs, whether music or touch or something else, are very important to infant brain development.”

Both experts said that while this study’s results are intriguing, it’s only a small pilot study, and that no definitive conclusions can be drawn from it.

Whether the effect seen in this study is exclusive to Mozart or could be replicated with other music is also unknown. The researchers suggest that the effect may be unique to Mozart because his music tends to repeat the melody more than music of other composers.

Brozanski said that she suspects that lullaby-type music that contains a soothing repetition would probably produce similar effects.

Cipriani said she doesn’t know if playing different music would change the outcome, but like Brozanski, she suspects the repetition probably is key. “The baby is used to hearing a beat before it’s born — the whoosh of the blood, the heartbeat — and it may be that certain types of music do a better job of soothing them and reminding them of the womb,” she said.