Abstract
BackgroundPrevious epidemiological studies have shown that fish consumption may modify the risk of ovarian cancer. However, these studies yielded controversial results. The present meta-analysis was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between fish intake and ovarian cancer risk.MethodsA literature search was carried out using Pubmed, Embase, and Cochrane Library Central database for all relevant studies up to August 2013. We pooled the relative risks (RR) from individual studies using fixed-effect or random-effect model, and carried out heterogeneity and publication bias analyses.ResultsA total of 15 (ten case–control, and five cohort) studies were included in the present meta-analysis, representing data for 889,033 female subjects and 6,087 ovarian cancer cases. We found that total fish intake was not significantly associated with the risk of ovarian cancer among cohort studies (RR = 1.04 95% CI [0.89, 1.22]) as well as case–control studies (RR = 0.90, 95% CI [0.73,1.12]). There was no evidence of publication bias as suggested by Begg's test (P = 0.55) and Egger's test(P = 0.29).ConclusionsThe present meta-analysis showed that total fish consumption was not significantly associated with the risk of ovarian cancer. Further analysis on different fish species and food preparation methods should be conducted in future studies.
Highlights
Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological malignancy and ranks as the sixth common cancer in women worldwide [1]
Because the absolute risk of ovarian cancer is low in human, the odds ratio (OR) in case–control studies should approximate the relative risks (RR) or hazard ratio (HR); we reported all results as RRs for simplicity
Meta-Analysis results of case-control studies Because significant heterogeneity was observed (I2 = 74.9%, p, 0.001), a random-effect model was chosen over a fixed-effect model and we found that fish consumption did not significantly affect the risk of ovarian cancer among case-control studies(RR = 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.73,1.12])
Summary
Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological malignancy and ranks as the sixth common cancer in women worldwide [1]. There are several case-control and cohort studies investigating the association between fish intake and ovarian cancer risk, their results were inconsistent. In 2010, Kolahdooz et al [15]performed a meta-analysis of observational studies which investigated the association between meat, fish intake and ovarian cancer risk. They reported that high fish intake was associated with a borderline significantly reduced risk of ovarian cancer(RR = 0.84; 95% CI: 0.68, 1.03). Their meta-analysis only included 8 observational studies, including two cohort studies, three hospital-based case-control studies, and three population-based case-control studies. The present meta-analysis was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between fish intake and ovarian cancer risk
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