Cancer survivors who followed healthy eating patterns had a lower risk of heart disease over about 12 years than peers who did not, according to a study published on 29 October 2026 in JACC: Advances, a journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study looked at more than 8,700 cancer survivors in the UK Biobank who had no cardiovascular disease at the start, and found 1,116 cardiovascular events during a median follow up of 12.3 years. Heart disease is the leading cause of non-cancer death among cancer survivors, the American College of Cardiology said, and the findings point to diet as one factor clinicians can discuss in long term follow up care.
The research matters because more people are living with a history of cancer as detection and treatment improve, and those people face a higher than average risk of cardiovascular disease, including people who never received chemotherapy or radiation that can harm the heart. The study team at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, compared common healthy dietary patterns to see which was more predictive of cardiovascular disease and life expectancy. Senior author Yang-Xin Chen, a cardiology clinician at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, said identifying factors that predict risk is an urgent need in cardio-oncology care.
How the study tracked cancer survivors
The team analysed data from 8,716 cancer survivors in the UK Biobank who were free of cardiovascular disease at baseline and had completed at least one 24 hour dietary recall assessment. Participants had a mean age of 59 years. The most common cancer types were breast cancer at 31.4 percent, prostate cancer at 9.8 percent, and colorectal cancer at 8.3 percent. Researchers scored several dietary patterns, including DASH, the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010, the Mediterranean diet, the MIND diet, and healthy low carbohydrate and low fat diets.
The main outcome was new cardiovascular disease, identified through hospital inpatient records and death registers. Analyses adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index, physical activity, smoking, socioeconomic status, blood pressure, lipids, diabetes, age at cancer onset, and a polygenic risk score for cardiovascular disease. During follow up, the 1,116 events included 858 cases of ischemic heart disease, 251 cases of heart failure, and 181 strokes, with some participants having more than one type of event.
Several patterns showed protective links with cardiovascular events: the Mediterranean diet, MIND, Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010, DASH, the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index, and a reversed energy adjusted dietary inflammatory index. A healthy low fat diet showed no significant benefit in the American College of Cardiology summary. The study is observational, so it shows links rather than proving that any one diet caused the difference.
Which diets were linked to lower risk for cancer survivors
DASH and the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 showed the strongest links with reduced cardiovascular risk. Comparing the highest with the lowest fifth of adherence, adjusted hazard ratios were 0.65 for DASH and 0.63 for the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010, pointing to roughly a one third lower risk in the highest adherence group. The Mediterranean diet had a hazard ratio of 0.72 and MIND had a hazard ratio of 0.74.
The patterns differed by outcome. The Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 showed the strongest links with reduced risk for ischemic heart disease, with a hazard ratio of 0.63, and for stroke, with a hazard ratio of 0.49. DASH showed the strongest link with reduced heart failure risk, with a hazard ratio of 0.54.
At age 45, participants with the highest adherence gained an estimated 1.7 to 3.3 additional years of life expectancy compared with those with the lowest adherence, with MIND linked to the longest gain. Chen said in the manuscript: “Our findings suggest that the cardiovascular benefits of diet in cancer survivors are not confined to one ‘ideal’ diet but are observed across several evidence-based healthy dietary patterns, supporting a flexible rather than prescriptive nutritional approach in cancer survivorship care.”
What the results mean for cancer survivors
The study does not point to a single diet that every survivor should follow, and it does not replace medical care for blood pressure, lipids, diabetes or other risk factors. The authors noted the absence of repeated dietary data over time, so they could not assess how changes in eating habits during follow up affected risk.
The pattern across diets was consistent: cancer survivors who scored highest on eating patterns had fewer cardiovascular events and lived longer in the estimates, even after adjustment for other risk factors. That consistency is one reason the authors argued for a flexible approach, built around vegetables, whole grains, legumes, fish and dairy, rather than a rigid prescription. For cancer survivors, the study adds diet to factors cardio-oncology teams track in follow up, alongside blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar, smoking and physical activity.