A DIET full of very salty foods doubles the risk of developing stomach cancer.

A study of 40,000 men and women in Japan, where salty food is popular and stomach cancer is the commonest form of the disease, found that those who ate the most salt were twice as likely to develop the disease.

The National Cancer Centre Research Institute in Kashiwa studied 18,684 men and 20,381 women. Among the men 358 developed stomach cancer, and among the women there were 128 cases.

For men with the lowest salt intake, the risk was one in 1,000 per year. But for those with higher intakes the risk doubled to one in 500, the team reports in British Journal of Cancer. Women with a low-salt diet had a risk of one in 2,000, rising to one in 1,300 among high-salt consumers.

• Smoking plays a larger role in the development of breast cancer than was previously believed, according to a study of 116,000 American women. It found that those who smoked had a 30 per cent higher chance of developing the disease. Some past studies have suggested that smoking might protect women against cancer by lowering oestrogen levels.

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