Dietary consumption patterns in breast cancer survivors: Pilot evaluation of diet, supplements and clinical factors.

PURPOSE: Adherence to dietary intake guidelines is recommended for optimal nutrition and outcomes in breast cancer survivors. The purpose of this study was to examine dietary quality in a cohort of breast cancer survivors related to current guidelines, guiding further education-based research. METHODS: This exploratory evaluation examined compliance with current dietary guidelines. Data collected included demographics, medical histories and repeated, three-day 24-h dietary recalls. Women with early-stage breast cancer (n = 97) who completed breast cancer treatment between 6 and 24 months were recruited. Descriptive statistics and frequencies were calculated for demographic and lifestyle characteristics, reported fish consumption, body mass index categories, supplement consumption, and adequacy of macronutrient and micronutrient consumption (classified as below, meeting, or exceeding needs). RESULTS: In this cohort, 28.9% were classified as overweight and 35% were obese. The mean dietary macronutrient consumption was 44.3% (±8.9%) carbohydrates, 36.6% (±7.3%) fat, and 17.3% (±4.7%) protein. Additionally, 32.3% participants consumed >45 g sugar/d. The mean n-6 to n-3 ratio was 8.0 (±3.3):1. Further, 38% of survivors reported consuming less than 1 serving of fish per week. Participants consumed between 0 and 1.03 servings of fish per day, with an average consumption of 0.16 (±0.26) servings per day and 61.5% (n = 59) consuming 0 servings per day. The mean daily combined dietary and supplement consumption of multiple micronutrients was below the Recommended Daily Allowance for Vitamin D (30%), Calcium (52.6%), Magnesium (42.1%), and Vitamin E (80%). CONCLUSION: Breast cancer survivors 0.5-2 years post-treatment are not meeting recommended nutrition consumption guidelines for a number of nutrients. Findings suggested that nutrition therapy targeting weight loss through reduced sugar, total and saturated fat, while increasing foods rich in omega-3, and ensuring adequate micronutrient consumption would promote better nutritional consumption patterns and improve overall health during survivorship.

LoRaD: Marginal likelihood estimation with haste (but no waste).

The Lowest Radial Distance (LoRaD) method is a modification of the recently introduced Partition-Weighted Kernel method for estimating the marginal likelihood of a model, a quantity important for Bayesian model selection. For analyses involving a fixed tree topology, LoRaD improves upon the Steppingstone or Thermodynamic Integration (Path Sampling) approaches now in common use in phylogenetics because it requires sampling only from the posterior distribution, avoiding the need to sample from a series of ad hoc power posterior distributions, and yet is more accurate than other fast methods such as the Generalized Harmonic Mean (GHM) method. We show that the method performs well in comparison to the Generalized Steppingstone method on an empirical fixed-topology example from molecular phylogenetics involving 180 parameters. The LoRaD method can also be used to obtain the marginal likelihood in the variable-topology case if at least one tree topology occurs with sufficient frequency in the posterior sample to allow accurate estimation of the marginal likelihood conditional on that topology. [Bayesian; marginal likelihood; phylogenetics.].