Thu Jul 17, 9:42 PM ET

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer

LONDON - A new study reopens the question, long dismissed by researchers, of whether women who eat high-fat diets increase their risk of breast cancer. The study found that those who average more than 90 grams of fat a day have roughly double the risk of those who eat just 37 grams.

Researchers who conducted the latest study argue theirs is better than previous studies, because it used a more precise method of measuring women's typical diets. The study, published in this week's Lancet medical journal, was conducted at Cambridge University in England and involved 13,070 women who kept diet records from 1993-97.

The researchers set out to discover whether the reason the previous follow-up studies found no link was that the method they used to examine dietary habits — a "food frequency questionnaire" — was too inaccurate. They also had the women keep a "daily food diary" in which they recorded everything they ate.

"The effects just weren't seen with food frequency questionnaires," said investigator Sheila Bingham, deputy director of the human nutrition unit at Cambridge University. However, when the "food diaries" were used to categorize the women, those who ate the diet highest in saturated fat were twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those who ate the least.

Women who ate a higher-fat diet were not necessarily fatter; but the women who ate the most saturated fat had twice the breast cancer risk as those who ate the least.

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