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. 2022 Apr 1;18(2):108-126.
doi: 10.4274/ejbh.galenos.2021.2021-11-2. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Lipid Intake and Breast Cancer Risk: Is There a Link? A New Focus and Meta-Analysis

Massimo Lodi  1   2   3 , Amélie Kiehl  2 , Fei Lin Qu  4 , Victor Gabriele  2 , Catherine Tomasetto  3 , Carole Mathelin  1   3
Affiliations

Lipid Intake and Breast Cancer Risk: Is There a Link? A New Focus and Meta-Analysis

Massimo Lodi et al. Eur J Breast Health. .

Abstract

Objective: To determine if there is an association between total lipid intake, saturated fatty acid (SFA), Poly- and Mono-Unsaturated Fatty Acid (PUFA and MUFA) and cholesterol intake and breast cancer risk.

Materials and methods: We conducted a systematic review of the literature and a meta-analysis following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We included all cohort and case-control studies published up to December 2020 with subgroup analysis according to menopausal status.

Results: We included 44 articles for analysis. There was no association between total fat, SFA, MUFA, PUFA and cholesterol intake and breast cancer in the general population and in pre-menopausal women. In postmenopausal women, high SFA consumption was associated with increased breast cancer risk in case-control studies [relative risk (RR): 1.12; confidence interval (CI) 95%: 1.03-1.21; p = 0.006 but not in cohort studies (RR: 1.01; CI 95%: 0.85-1.19; p = 0.93).

Conclusion: There was a weak association between high SFA consumption and breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women, however there was high heterogeneity for this analysis. As lipids can have different actions in the same family, studies should rather focus on specific lipid consumption.

Keywords: Breast cancer risk; cholesterol; dietary fat intake; mono-unsaturated fatty acid; saturated fatty acid.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart diagram n: number
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of saturated fatty acids intake in case-control studies on post-menopausal women CI: confidence interval
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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