Milk/dairy products consumption, galactose metabolism and ovarian cancer: meta-analysis of epidemiological studies.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death among women and the leading cause of gynaecological cancer death in the United States. Milk/dairy products consumption was considered to be a risk factor for ovarian cancer mainly because milk carbohydrate-lactose and galactose metabolism is toxic to oocytes. However, recent evidence does not support this hypothesis completely. We collected epidemiological studies related to the association between milk/dairy products consumption or galactose metabolism (lactose, galactose, galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase, lactose/transferase) and ovarian cancer published between January 1966 and August 2003 and found 27 items from 22 independent studies. Twenty studies were case-control studies and the other two were cohort studies. A meta-analysis method was conducted to estimate relative risk combining all relative data. In general, we did not find any association between milk/dairy products or galactose metabolism and ovarian cancer risk in this meta-analysis. The consumption of whole milk and butter, which contain relatively high amounts of fat, was positively (relative risk > 1.2), but not significantly, associated with an increased risk.
Qin
L-Q
LQ
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, University of Yamanashi, Tamaho, Shimokato 1110, Yamanashi 409-3898, Japan. shinr@res.yamanashi-med.ac.jp
Xu
J-Y
JY
Wang
P-Y
PY
Hashi
A
A
Hoshi
K
K
Sato
A
A
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003611:Dairy Products; D004032:Diet; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D005260:Female; D005690:Galactose / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D012307:Risk Factors
D005690:Galactose