METAANALYSES OF DIETARY FATS AND MAMMARY NEOPLASMS IN RODENT EXPERIMENTS

We review two meta-analyses of experiments on dietary fat and mammary tumor incidence in rodents, emphasizing a recent meta-analysis on the effects of different types of dietary fatty acids. This analysis shows that n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids most strongly enhance mammary tu mors in rodents, and saturated fats also enhance these tumors but less strongly. Further, the analysis shows that energy restriction protect s against mammary tumors. We show that these results agree qualitative ly with estimates of effects on human breast cancer derived from inter national correlations.