Could Fish Oil Help Fight Breast Cancer?
By: Nicole Service July 2010
A new study suggests that
fish oil supplements could reduce the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal
The study by the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at the benefit of 15
different supplements and what effect, if any, they had on breast cancer.
Researchers discovered that only fish oil had an effect. The study was
published in the July issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &
Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Researchers questioned about
35,000 Washington State women who were between the ages of 50 and 76, had no
history of breast cancer and who were participants in the Vitamins and
Lifestyle (VITAL) cohort study.
Between 2000 and 2002,
researchers asked the women about their current versus past use of specialty
supplements as well as about the frequency of their use. After six-years of
follow up, they found that women who regularly used fish oil supplements had a
32 percent reduced risk of developing the most common form of breast cancer. Of
the total number of women in the study, 880 developed the disease.
Several researchers suggest
that omega-3 fatty acid, which is abundant in fish oil, has many advantages.
Fish oil and omega-3 fatty acid have already been proven to lower the risk of
death and heart attack in people with have heart disease. Fish oil is also used
to treat people with high levels of the blood fat known as triglyceride, and
has been shown to have a beneficial effect on the healthy HDL cholesterol
Researchers said it is still
unclear just how fish oil protects against breast cancer, but they believe it
has to do with the supplement's ant-inflammatory properties.
caution against women substituting fish oil for their breast cancer prevention
or treatment. One big problem is researchers couldn't quantify just how much
fish oil the woman consumed.
Senior author, Emily White,
said most women used the fish oil supplement up to seven days a week, but they
didn't know how much was used. The study was "observational" only,
and not a randomized trial that compared the use of fish oil with a group not
using fish oil and the effect on cancer rates.
Critics also cautioned that
the lower breast cancer risk among women taking fish oil supplements could be
due to chance and more research is still needed.
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