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People who eat a lot of unfermented soy products may have a smaller chance of getting lung cancer, a fresh look at past research suggests.
Because researchers studying the link between diet and lung cancer have come to mixed conclusions on soy, Chinese and US scientists conducted a meta-analysis of 11 observational studies, a few of which followed people for a decade or longer.
The pooled data showed that people who consumed the most soy had a 23% lower risk of lung cancer than those who consumed the least.
The new findings, published November 9th in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, come with several caveats, according to Dr Wan-Shui Yang from the Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and colleagues.
Not soy alone
The link between soy and cancer only held for unfermented products such as tofu and soy milk, for example. What's more, it was only found in people who never smoked, in women and in Asian populations.
Dr Matthew Schabath, a researcher at the Moffitt Cancer Centre in Tampa, Florida whose study was included in the analysis, cautioned that more research is needed to tease out the relationship between soy and lung cancer.
It may not be soy alone, Dr Schabath told Reuters Health. It could be a collection of other nutrients packaged in the food.
We've been looking at this for decades, he added. The observational studies do consistently show that healthy diets will provide beneficial effects. We just haven't found the one magic pill that will be able to prevent this. It just tells you about the complexity of this.
(Reuters Health, November 2011)
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