Dietary and Circulating Vitamins, Polymorphisms of Vitamin Metabolism Genes, and the Risk of Gastrointestinal...

Vitamin intake may reduce gastrointestinal cancer risk, but how genetic polymorphisms in vitamin metabolism affect this association remains unclarified. This meta-analysis examined whether genetic polymorphisms in vitamin metabolism influence the association between dietary and circulating vitamins and the risk of gastrointestinal cancers.

Literature search was conducted to gather studies investigating the associations between vitamins, genetic polymorphisms, and gastrointestinal cancer risk. Statistical analyses were conducted using "meta" package in R.

Our meta-analysis incorporated 64 studies on colorectal cancer (CRC), gastric cancer, and esophageal cancer, focusing on vitamin B and vitamin D. High dietary intake of vitamin B was significantly associated with reduced gastrointestinal cancer risk (odds ratio [OR] 0.84, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.79-0.90), as was its circulating level (OR 0.53, 95% CI 0.36-0.78). Individuals harboring the MTHFR 1298 AA/AC and CC genotypes demonstrated varying association of CRC risk with dietary vitamin B intake ( P -het = 0.04), whereas the significant inverse association of circulating vitamin B with CRC risk was found only for MTHFR 677 TT carriers (OR 0.57, 95% CI 0.33-0.97), but not for the CC/CT genotype (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.80-1.21, P -het = 0.06). High dietary (OR 0.69, 95% CI 0.53-0.90) and circulating vitamin D levels (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.59-0.94) significantly lowered gastrointestinal cancer risk. The inverse association between circulating vitamin D and CRC risk was exclusively yielded for VDR TaqI Tt/tt carriers (OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.28-0.95), other than the TT genotype (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.70-1.19, P -het = 0.10).

High dietary and circulating vitamin B and vitamin D levels were associated with lowered gastrointestinal cancer risk, and the associations may be modified by certain genetic variations in vitamin metabolism pathways.