Unsaturated fatty acids intake and breast cancer risk: A narrative review

Introduction & Aim: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. The relationship between unsaturated fatty acids and breast cancer has been discussed, because of the high frequency of breast cancer and the conflicting results from the numerous studies allocated to this issue. The purpose of this study is to determine this relationshipMethods: This is a narrative review to assess the relationship between unsaturated fatty acids and breast cancer. We searched Google Scholar, Cochrane, and Science Direct and Med Line for identifying relevant analytic studies (Cohort and case- control studies). We used the key words: monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), breast cancerResults: The relationship between MUFA intake and breast cancer risk seems to belong on the contributing food: neutral or beneficial for vegetable oil, rather disadvantageous for animal products. Opposite to data from animal experiments, human studies do not show any increase of breast cancer risk with n-6 PUFA intake. Estimating the risk associated with alpha-linolenic acid appears difficult due to the incompleteness of food composition tables and studies on biomarkers remain few. The same applies to long-chain n-3 PUFA despite the suggestion of a decrease in risk, in agreement with animal studies. Conclusion: However, it is difficult in human to disentangle the effect of nutrient intake from that of contributing foods or even nutritional profile.