Relax, Mrs. Sprat

WOMEN HAVE BEEN TOLD FOR YEARS THAT ONE WAY to reduce the risk of breast cancer is to eat the right diet: plenty of fiber, not too much fat. But a major new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says it ain't necessarily so. After keeping tabs on nearly 90,000 women for eight years, doctors at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and other institutions found no evidence for the assertion. Earlier studies had pointed to the same conclusion, but diehards still think the link may exist. They point out that all the women in the study ate plenty of fat; it was just that high-fat diets generated no more cancer than moderate-fat regimens. Perhaps women who eat negligible amounts of fat do have reduced breast-cancer levels. It's hard to test, since such women are scarce in the U.S. But because high- fat, low-fiber diets cause other health problems, women should avoid them anyway.

Meanwhile, a study in the Lancet appears to strengthen another suspected breast-cancer link. Women whose mothers had toxemia during pregnancy (a form of high blood pressure that can also lower estrogen levels) are 75% less likely to get breast cancer as adults. High estrogen levels, in other words, are still a danger signal.