# Soy food intake after diagnosis of breast cancer and survival: an in-depth analysis of combined evidence from cohort studies of US and Chinese women

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-nechuta-am-j-clin-nutr/  
OnCo record `paper-nechuta-am-j-clin-nutr` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one technology page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 22648714 and published in The American journal of clinical nutrition; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Background: Soy isoflavones have antiestrogenic and anticancer properties but also possess estrogen-like properties, which has raised concern about soy food consumption among breast cancer survivors.

Objective: We prospectively evaluated the association between postdiagnosis soy food consumption and breast cancer outcomes among US and Chinese women by using data from the After Breast Cancer Pooling Project.

Design: The analysis included 9514 breast cancer survivors with a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer between 1991 and 2006 from 2 US cohorts and 1 Chinese cohort. Soy isoflavone intake (mg/d) was measured with validated food-frequency questionnaires. HRs and 95% CIs were estimated by using delayed-entry Cox regression models, adjusted for sociodemographic, clinical, and lifestyle factors.

Results: After a mean follow-up of 7.4 y, we identified 1171 total deaths (881 from breast cancer) and 1348 recurrences. Despite large differences in soy isoflavone intake by country, isoflavone consumption was inversely associated with recurrence among both US and Chinese women, regardless of whether data were analyzed separately by country or combined. No heterogeneity was observed. In the pooled analysis, consumption of ≥10 mg isoflavones/d was associated with a nonsignificant reduced risk of all-cause (HR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.70, 1.10) and breast cancer-specific (HR: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.64, 1.07) mortality and a statistically significant reduced risk of recurrence (HR: 0.75; 95% CI: 0.61, 0.92).

Conclusion: In this large study of combined data on US and Chinese women, postdiagnosis soy food consumption of ≥10 mg isoflavones/d was associated with a nonsignificant reduced risk of breast cancer-specific mortality and a statistically significant reduced risk of recurrence.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 22648714 (DOI 10.3945/ajcn.112.035972). Matched by DOI alone: one technology page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: The American journal of clinical nutrition
- Year: 2012
- DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.112.035972
- Authors: Nechuta SJ, Caan BJ, Chen WY, et al.
- What it means: One technology page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Am J Clin Nutr 2012: https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.112.035972
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22648714/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/22648714

## Connected records

- technologies: [Soy foods and breast cancer](https://onco.cc/technologies/soy-breast-cancer/)

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