Wine drinking and epithelial ovarian cancer risk: a meta-analysis

Wine has been the focus in the prevention of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) development because resveratrol abundant in wine has anti-carcinogenic properties. However, epidemiologic results have been heterogenous in the chemopreventive effect of wine on the development of EOC. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis for comparing EOC risk between wine and never drinkers using previous related studies.

After extensive search of the literature between January 1986 and December 2008, we analyzed 10 studies (3 cohort and 7 case control studies) with 135,871 women, who included 65,578 of wine and 70,293 of never drinkers.

In all studies, there was no significant difference in EOC risk between wine and never drinkers (odds ratio [OR], 1.13; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.92 to 1.38; random effects). When we performed re-analysis according to the study design, 3 cohort and 7 case control studies showed that there were also no significant differences in EOC risk between wine and never drinkers, respectively (OR, 1.44 and 1.04; 95% CI, 0.74 and 2.82 and 0.88 to 1.22; random effects). In sub-analyses using 2 case-control studies, EOC risk was not different between former and never drinkers (OR, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.87 to 1.44; fixed effect), and between current and former drinkers (OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.41 to 1.34; random effects).

Although resveratrol, abundantly found in wine, is a promising naturally occurring compound with chemopreventive properties on EOC in preclinical studies, this meta-analysis suggests the epidemiologic evidence shows no association between wine drinking and EOC risk.