Meta-analysis of Soy Consumption and Gastrointestinal Cancer Risk

Soy consumption has received considerable attention for its potential role in reducing cancer incidence and mortality. However, its effects on gastrointestinal (GI) cancer are controversial. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the association between soy consumption and gastrointestinal cancer risk by searching for prospective studies in PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE and the reference lists of the included articles. The study-specific odds ratio (OR), relative risk (RR) or hazard ratio (HR) estimates and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were pooled using either a fixed-effect or random-effect model. Twenty-two independent prospective studies were eligible for our meta-analysis, including 21 cohort studies and one nested case-control study. Soy product consumption was inversely associated with the incidence of overall GI cancer (0.857; 95% CI: 0.766, 0.959) and the gastric cancer subgroup (0.847; 95% CI: 0.722, 0.994) but not the colorectal cancer subgroup. After stratifying the results according to gender, an inverse association was observed between soy product intake and the incidence of GI cancer for females (0.711; 95% CI: 0.506, 0.999) but not for males.