The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7329 p841
11 December 2004

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High folic acid doses require further investigation

Women taking high doses of folate throughout pregnancy may be more likely to die from breast cancer in later life, a new study sugggests (BMJ 2004;329:1375). However, the association was not statistically significant and an accompanying commentary (BMJ 2004;329:1376) argues that the reported association is most likely to be a result of chance.

The study presents preliminary data following up 2,928 women who enrolled in a trial of folate supplementation in pregnancy in the 1960s. They found that 1.5 per cent of whose who took high-dose folate supplements died of breast cancer, compared with 0.8 per cent of whose who had taken a placebo. The authors, from Aberdeen Maternity Hospital, acknowledge that this may be a chance finding. However, they argue that their finding, together with a recent study showing that rats fed high and low folate diets had greater mammary tumorigenesis than rats fed sufficient folate, suggest that further studies of the role of high doses of folate in breast cancer are needed.