The incidence and mortality of gastric cancer have been steadily decreased over the past few decades. However, gastric cancer is still one of the leading causes of cancer deaths across many regions of the world, particularly in Asian countries. In previous studies, nutrition has been considered one of significant risk factors in gastric cancer patients. Especially, malnourished patients are at greater risk of adverse clinical outcomes (e.g., longer hospital stay) and higher incidence of complications (e.g., wound/infectious complications) compared to well-nourished patients. Malnutrition is commonly found in advanced gastric cancer patients due to poor absorption of essential nutrients after surgery. Therefore, nutritional support protocols, such as early oral and enternal feeding, have been proposed in many studies, to improve unfavorable clinical outcomes and to reduce complications due to delayed application of oral nutritional support or parental feeding. Also, the supplied with enternal immune-enriched diet had more benefits in improving clinical outcomes and fewer complications compared to a group supplied with control formula. Using nutritional screening tools, such as nutritional risk index (NRI) and nutritional risk screening (NRS 2002), malnourished patients showed higher incidence of complications and lower survival rates than non-malnourished patients. However, a long-term nutritional intervention, such as nutritional counseling, was not effective in the patients. Therefore, early assessment of nutritional status in patients using a proper nutritional screening tool is suggested to prevent malnutrition and adverse health outcomes. Further studies with numerous ethnic groups may provide stronger scientific evidences in association between nutritional care and recovery from surgery in patients with gastric cancer.
Citations
In the past few decades, the incidence of thyroid cancer has rapidly increased worldwide. Thyroid cancer incidence is relatively high in regions where the population's daily iodine intake is insufficient. While low dietary iodine has been considered as a risk factor for thyroid cancer development, previous studies found controversial results across different food types. Among different ethnic groups, dietary factors are influenced by various dietary patterns, eating habits, life-styles, nutrition, and other environmental factors. This review reports the association between dietary factors and thyroid cancer risk among ethnic groups living in different geologic regions. Iodine-rich food such as fish and shellfish may provide a protective role in populations with insufficient daily iodine intake. The consumption of goitrogenic food, such as cruciferous vegetables, showed a positive association with risk. While considered to be a risk factor for other cancers, alcohol intake showed a protective role against thyroid cancer. High consumption of meat such as chicken, pork, and poultry showed a positive association with the risk, but dairy products showed no significant association. Regular use of multivitamins and dietary nitrate and nitrite also showed a positive association with thyroid cancer risk. However, the study results are inconsistent and investigations into the mechanism for how dietary factors change thyroid hormone levels and influence thyroid function are required.
Citations
First
Prev
