Fatty acid intake and erythrocyte fatty acid profile in women with breast, ovarian and cervical cancers

Abstract

Summary Aim To assess dietary fat and fatty acid (FA) intakes and to correlate it with red blood cell (RBC) FA composition in women with newly diagnosed breast, cervical and ovarian cancer. Methods 185 women who were newly diagnosed with breast, cervical or ovarian cancer were recruited for the study and dietary information was obtained using food frequency questionnaires. RBC fatty acid composition was analyzed in a subset of 96 women with cancers (35 breast cancer, 31 cervical cancer and 30 ovarian cancer) and 56 age-matched controls. Results Subjects with malignancies were seen to consume lower amounts of fat and higher amounts of carbohydrates compared with controls. While the intakes of saturated fatty acids (SFA) were similar across the groups, The intakes of PUFA, specifically linoleic acid (LA, 18:2 n-6) and long chain n-3 PUFA (LC n-3 PUFA) were significantly lower (p Conclusion The study shows a good correlation between dietary PUFA intakes and RBC PUFA composition, and suggests that elongation of fatty acids is significantly affected in cancer such that it favours the formation of pro-inflammatory n-6 PUFA while repressing the formation of anti-inflammatory n-3 PUFAs.