Nutritional) chemoprevention of cancer: what's up?

摘要

Some of the initial motivation for cancer chemoprevention was derived from observations regarding the effects of nutrients on carcinogenesis, and so it is fitting that the Journal now publishes a progress report of sorts for nutritional interventions. Davies et al. (1) have assumed the difficult task of summarizing the effects of all nutritional interventions across all the studied populations and endpoints. With the heterogeneity inherent in each of these, there is clearly a risk of mixing apples and oranges into an uninterpretable stew. However, even if the summary estimates may be difficult to interpret in some cases, it is valuable to see the studies arrayed together in one place. Moreover, it certainly is sensible to examine mortality across studies of a common treatment, even if different cancers are involved.