Copyright © 2005 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Plasma Carotenoids, Retinol, and Tocopherols and Risk of Breast Cancer
1 Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
2 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
3 Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
4 Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
5 Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
6 Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, Boston, MA.
The roles of carotenoids, retinol, and tocopherols in breast cancer etiology have been inconclusive. The authors prospectively assessed the relations between plasma 
-carotene, ß-carotene, ß-cryptoxanthin, lycopene, lutein/zeaxanthin, retinol, -tocopherol, and 
-tocopherol and breast cancer risk by conducting a nested case-control study using plasma collected from women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study. A total of 969 cases of breast cancer diagnosed after blood draw and prior to June 1, 1998, were individually matched to controls. The multivariate risk of breast cancer was 25–35% less for women with the highest quintile compared with that for women with the lowest quintile of -carotene (odds ratio (OR) = 0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.47, 0.88; ptrend = 0.01), ß-carotene (OR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.53, 1.02; ptrend = 0.01), lutein/zeaxanthin (OR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.55, 1.01; ptrend = 0.04), and total carotenoids (OR = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.55, 1.05; ptrend = 0.05). The inverse association observed with -carotene and breast cancer was greater for invasive cancers with nodal metastasis. The authors conclude that some carotenoids are inversely associated with breast cancer. Although the association was strongest for -carotene, the high degree of collinearity among plasma carotenoids limits our ability to conclude that this association is specific to any individual carotenoid.
breast neoplasms; carotenoids; oxidative stress; tocopherols; vitamin A
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; LRT, likelihood ratio test; OR, odds ratio.
Correspondence to Dr. Rulla M. Tamimi, Channing Laboratory, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: rulla.tamimi{at}channing.harvard.edu).
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