Study supports folic acid use

Women who have a family history of colon cancer can reduce their risk by taking vitamins containing folic acid.

Popping a multivitamin with folic acid every day erased the roughly doubled risk found in women who had a parent or sibling with colon cancer, researchers at Harvard University found.

"There is a lot of value to a multivitamin," said Dr Charles Fuchs of Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who led the study.

"It reduces the excess risk associated with a family history."

He said those with more than 400 micrograms of folic acid per day in their diet largely negated the effects of family history.

Dr Fuchs said there was probably a gene that made a person susceptible if something else in the environment, perhaps diet-related, happened.

Colon cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the United States after lung cancer and breast and prostate cancer. About 107,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colon cancer this year and 48,000 will die of it, says the American Cancer Society.

Studies show that a typical Western diet, heavy on meat, eggs, high-fat dairy, sugar and refined grains, is associated with a higher risk of colon cancer.

Other studies have found a low intake of folic acid and the amino acid methionine, and heavy use of alcohol, are associated with colon cancer.

Folic acid is found in leafy green vegetables such as brussels sprouts and spinach and is also found in strawberries.

Dr Fuchs' team followed more than 88,000 women in a bigger study called the Nurses Health Study for 16 years. Of them, 535 were diagnosed with colon cancer.

Women who had a family history of colon cancer greatly reduced their risk by taking a vitamin containing the recommended 400 micrograms of folic acid a day, the researchers reported in this month's issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

Women who drank moderately to heavily - defined as more than two-and-a-half drinks a day - and who had a family history of colon cancer increased their risk.

Folic acid is so important that in 1998, the Institute of Medicine, which sets vitamin recommendations, increased the Dietary Reference Intake to 400 micrograms a day.

New Zealand charity CCS also suggests women should have 400mcg of folate a day.

- REUTERS

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