(Vegan AF) — A new study warns that women who consume milk have an increased risk of developing breast cancer — up to 80% depending on the amount consumed. The study was recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology and was conducted by researchers at Loma Linda University Health.
The study involved data on more than 52,000 women in the United States. None of the women had cancer when the study first started. Over a span of 8 years, the women were tracked and 1,057 of them developed breast cancer. After analyzing the data, the study linked that women who consumed reduced-fat and full-fat dairy milk had an increased risk of developing breast cancer.
First author of the paper, Gary E. Fraser, MBChB, PhD, said the observational study gives “fairly strong evidence that either dairy milk or some other factor closely related to drinking dairy milk is a cause of breast cancer in women."
“Consuming as little as 1/4 to 1/3 cup of dairy milk per day was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer of 30%,” Fraser said. “By drinking up to one cup per day, the associated risk went up to 50%, and for those drinking two to three cups per day, the risk increased further to 70% to 80%,” Fraser said.
Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in women. The American Cancer Society predicts that in 2020, over 276,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and over 42,000 will die from the disease.
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