Is there a link between soy and an increased risk of breast cancer? “That’s one of the most common questions I get from breast cancer survivors,” says Wendy Chen, MD, MPH, a breast oncologist with the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber. While laboratory studies on soy compounds in isolation have sparked questions about a possible connection, studies of breast cancer patients in China and Japan have not shown any increased breast cancer risk resulting from soy consumption.
There is a biological basis for this line of inquiry. “Soy has what are called phytoestrogens,” Chen says. “These are plant-based estrogens. If you look at certain compounds in isolation, some of them have been shown in lab studies to increase cancer cell growth. However, that has never been shown in people.”
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