High Folic Acid Intake does not Increase Cancer Risks in Women

High folic acid intake does not increase cancer risks in women, according to a new study.

Health experts recommend for women to take folic acid regularly before and after conception to prevent a wide range of birth defects, particularly some neural tube defects. The recommended level is 400 micrograms a day.

However, high intake of the vitamin, which helps in cell growth, has been linked to cancer risks in women.

"Folic acid supplementation does not substantially increase or decrease incidence of site-specific cancer during the first 5 years of treatment," the authors wrote.

"Fortification of flour and other cereal products involves doses of folic acid that are, on average, an order of magnitude smaller than the doses used in these trials."

For the current study, researchers used data from 13 previous studies and followed 50,000 women for more than five years. Participants took a daily dose of either folic acid or vitamin-free placebo, Reuters Health reported.

At the end of their short-term study, researchers couldn't find any association between high folic acid intake during pregnancy and cancer. A minority of the participants, both from the folic acid (7.7 percent) and placebo group (7.3 percent) developed cancer during the treatment period.

"The conclusion you can make from this is that over a relatively short period of time, there was no significant benefit or harm," John Baron from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Lebanon, New Hampshire, who worked on the review, told Reuters Health.

However, as folate helps in the growth of cells, including cancer cells, a high intake can prove to be risky, researchers warn pregnant women.

"Thus, folate has a putative two-faced relationship with cancer: it can protect against initiation, but promote proliferation," Medpage Today quoted the authors as writing.

The study has been published in The Lancet.