Association among Dietary Flavonoids, Flavonoid Subclasses and Ovarian Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis

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Background

Previous studies have indicated that intake of dietary flavonoids or flavonoid subclasses is associated with the ovarian cancer risk, but presented controversial results. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to derive a more precise estimation of these associations.

  The characteristics of the included studies were presented in Table 1, of which nine were high-quality studies (scores≥7.0). The selected studies were published between 2003 and 2014 spanning 11 years, and all of them were published in English. Among these 12 studies, 5 were prospective cohort studies, 7 were case-control studies, including 5 population based case-control studies, and 2 hospital based case-control studies. Moreover, 6 studies were from USA, 2 from China, and the rest were respectively from United Kingdom, Swedish, Australian, and Italy. The exposure assessments of flavonoids and flavonoid subclasses in 12 studies were made by questionnaire or published food composition data bases.

  Moreover, results from Egger’s tests indicated no evidence of publication bias among these studies (p = 0.26). (Fig 6).

Conclusions

In summary, the available evidence suggested that intake of dietary flavonoids, flavonoid subclasses (isoflavones, flavonols) has a protective effect against ovarian cancer with a reduced incidence of ovarian cancer. While the evidence for possible protection of flavones consumption against ovarian cancer was not compelling. The findings likely provide useful insight and evidence which can be used by healthcare professionals when discussing dietary flavonoids and ovarian cancer prevention with patients. While, further investigations on a larger population covering more other different flavonoid subclasses are required to confirm our findings.