Breast Cancer and Folic Acid, Is There a Protective Effect?

While breast cancer is the most common cancer among women globally and is the leadingcause of cancer-related deaths of women, nutritional status and dietary factors may contributeto development of this malignancy. On the other hand, it was estimated that approximatelyone-third of all cancer deaths could have been prevented by appropriate dietary modification.Many epidemiological studies have investigated the association between folate intake,circulating folate level and risk of breast cancer; however, the findings were inconsistentbetween the studies. PubMed was searched from January 1966 to January 2014. The MeSHterm breast neoplasms combined with folic acid. A meta-analysis of 16 eligible prospectivestudies with a total of 744 068 participants and 26 205 breast cancer patients and 26case†control studies with a total of 16 826 cases and 21 820 controls that have evaluatedthe association between folate intake and breast cancer risk indicated a U-shapedrelationship for the dietary folate intake and breast cancer risk. Women with daily dietaryfolate intake between 153 and 400 mg showed a significant reduced breast cancer riskcompared with those <153 mg, but not for those >400 mg.

Keywords:

Breast Cancer , Folic Acid , Diet , Prevention , Nutrition