Dietary B-Vitamin Intake and Risk of Breast, Endometrial, Ovarian and Colorectal Cancer among Canadians

Abstract

Few studies have explored the associations of thiamin, niacin and riboflavin with risk of cancer despite their role in potentially cancer-associated one-carbon metabolism. Using multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models modified for the case-cohort design, we examined the associations of dietary intake of the above-mentioned B vitamins, as well as folate, and vitamins B6 and B12, with risk of the breast (n = 922), endometrial (n = 180), ovarian (n = 104) and colorectal (n = 266) cancers among age-stratified subcohorts of 3,185 women who were randomly selected from a cohort of 73,909 participants. None of the B-vitamins were associated with risk of breast or colorectal cancers. However, relatively high dietary intake of folate intake was inversely associated with risk of endometrial (HR_{q4 vs q1}: 0.52; 95% CI: 0.29–0.93) and ovarian (HR_{q3 vs q1}: 0.39; 95% CI: 0.19–0.80) cancers while relatively high dietary intake of vitamin B6 was inversely associated with ovarian cancer risk (HR_{q3 vs q1}: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.24–0.98). These findings suggest that dietary intake of folate may reduce risk of endometrial and ovarian cancers and dietary intake of vitamin B6 may reduce risk of ovarian cancer.