COMMENTARY

Colorectal cancer

Folate: a magic bullet or a double edged sword for colorectal cancer prevention?

Y-I Kim

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Y-I Kim
Room 7258, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto, 1 King’s College Circle, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A8; youngin.kim@utoronto.ca

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Low folate status might inhibit colorectal carcinogenesis and high folate status may promote colorectal carcinogenesis, contradicting findings from epidemiological studies showing an inverse relationship between folate status and risk of colorectal cancer

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Keywords: folate; folic acid; colorectal cancer

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Folate is a water soluble B vitamin, deficiency of which appears to play an important pathogenetic role in the development of anaemia, atherosclerosis, neural tube defects (NTDs), adverse pregnancy outcomes, neuropsychiatric disorders, and cancer.¹ Folic acid is the fully oxidised monoglutamyl form of this vitamin that is used commercially in supplements and in fortified foods. Folate is generally regarded as safe and has long been presumed to be purely beneficial and an ideal functional food component for disease prevention.^2,3 For example, an overwhelming body of evidence for a protective effect of periconceptional folic acid supplementation against NTDs led to mandatory folic acid fortification in the USA and Canada in 1998.⁴ The effectiveness of folic acid fortification in improving folate status has already been shown to be quite striking, with a dramatic increase in blood measurements of folate concentrations in the USA and Canada.⁴ Preliminary reports also suggest a . . . [Full text of this article]

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