NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eating a diet that includes large amounts of whole grains may have a new benefit: a reduced risk of liver cancer, a new study suggests.
An analysis of more than 125,000 men and women over the past 24 years found that those who ate more whole grains had a 40 percent lower risk of developing liver cancer than those who ate less.
The researchers found in the journal Gamma Network Open that the study group included only 141 cases of liver cancer and it is therefore necessary to determine why the whole grain protection.
"Although liver cancer is relatively rare in the United States, it is deadly," said Xuehong Chang, a senior researcher at Harvard Medical School who works at the Boston Women's Hospital.
"The low incidence of the disease is mainly due to lower rates of liver cancer in the United States (less than five per 100,000 people), although the frequency of infection has accelerated in recent decades," he told Reuters Health.
"As expected, we documented only 200 cases (liver cancer), despite the large sample and long-term follow-up," he said.
"The consumption of whole grains and dietary fiber, especially fiber-rich cereals, has been associated with reduced chances of obesity, type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which increase the risk of liver cancer," Zhang said in an e-mail.