THURSDAY, March 31, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- For women with breast cancer, fasting less than 13 hours per night is associated with increased risk of recurrence, according to a study published online March 31 in JAMA Oncology.
Catherine R. Marinac, from the University of California in La Jolla, and colleagues collected data from 2,413 women with breast cancer and without diabetes mellitus. They estimated the nightly fasting duration from 24-hour dietary recalls collected at baseline and years one and four and examined the correlation with recurrence and mortality.
The researchers found that the mean fasting duration was 12.5 hours per night. Compared with fasting 13 hours or more per night, fasting less than 13 hours correlated with increased risk of breast cancer recurrence (hazard ratio, 1.36; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.05 to 1.76). The risks of breast cancer mortality and all-cause mortality were not significantly increased with nightly fasting of less than 13 hours (hazard ratios, 1.21 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.91 to 1.60] and 1.22 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.95 to 1.56], respectively). After adjustment for multiple variables, each two-hour increase in the nightly fasting duration correlated with significantly lower hemoglobin A1c levels and with a longer duration of nighttime sleep.
"Prolonging the length of the nightly fasting interval may be a simple, nonpharmacologic strategy for reducing the risk of breast cancer recurrence," the authors write.
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