Abstract
It has been proposed that the high intake of soy foods among Asians may partly explain their lower rates of breast cancer, perhaps by lowering endogenous oestrogen levels, although this has been inadequately studied. Twenty healthy cycling premenopausal women (ten Asians and ten non-Asians) participated in a 7-month soy intervention study which was designed to investigate the effect of supplementation on ovarian function. Asian soy foods (tofu, soymilk, green soybean peas) in the amount of approximately 32 mg of isoflavones per day were added to the women’s diets for three menstrual cycles. The women’s baseline (two cycles) serum hormone levels were compared to levels during soy intervention (three cycles) and levels after intervention (two cycles). During the entire study period, subjects provided almost daily overnight urine samples and blood specimens during specified days of their menstrual cycles. The day of urinary luteinizing hormone (LH) peak was used as a marker for the day of ovulation. Knowledge of day of ovulation allowed comparison of hormone measurements at baseline to those obtained during intervention and recovery cycles with standardization of day of cycle. Soy intervention was associated with a statistically significant reduction in serum luteal oestradiol level (–9.3%, P< 0.05), but there were no significant changes in follicular phase oestradiol, follicular or luteal phase progesterone, sex hormone-binding globulin or menstrual cycle length. This significant reduction in luteal phase oestradiol was, however, observed only among Asian (–17.4%) but not among non-Asian (–1.2%) participants; urinary excretion of isoflavones was higher among Asians than non-Asians (29.2 vs 17.1 μmol day–1, P = 0.16) during the intervention period. Thus, supplementation using traditional soy foods reduced serum oestradiol levels among Asian participants in this study. Differences in the type of soy products (i.e. traditional soy foods versus soy protein products), amount of isoflavones, and race/ethnicity of participants may have contributed to the divergent results. Larger soy intervention studies designed specifically to include participants of different race/ethnicities and using both traditional soy foods and soy protein products providing comparable doses of isoflavones are needed to definitively determine the effect of soy on ovarian function. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Similar content being viewed by others
Article PDF
Change history
16 November 2011
This paper was modified 12 months after initial publication to switch to Creative Commons licence terms, as noted at publication
References
Adlercreutz H (1990) Western diet and western disease: some hormonal and biochemical mechanisms and associations. Scand J Clin Lab Invest Suppl 50: 3–23
Adlercreutz H, Honjo A, Higashi A, Fotsis T, Hamalainen E, Hasegawa T and Okada H (1991) Urinary excretion of lignans and isoflavonoid phytoestrogens in Japanese men and women consuming a traditional Japanese diet. Am J Clin Nutr 54: 1093–1100
Adlercreutz H, Mousavi Y and Hockerstedt K (1992) Diet and breast cancer. Acta Oncol 31: 175–181
Anderson JW, Johnstone BM and Cook-Newell ME (1995) Meta-analysis of the effects of soy protein intake on serum lipids. N Engl J Med 333: 276–282
Brown JP (1988) Hydrolysis of glycosides and esters. Role of the Gut Flora in Toxicity and Cancer, Rowland IR109–144, Academic Press: San Diego, CA
Cassidy A, Bingham S and Setchell KDR (1994) Biological effects of a diet of soy protein rich in isoflavones on the menstrual cycle of premenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr 60: 333–340
Cassidy A and Bingham S Setchell (1995) Biological effects of isoflavones in young women: importance of the chemical composition of soyabean products. Br J Nutr 74: 587–601
Chen Z, Zheng W, Custer LJ, Dai Q, Xhu XO, Jin F and Franke AA (1999) Usual dietary consumption of soy foods and its correlation with the excretion rate of isoflavonoids in overnight urine samples among Chinese women in Shanghai. Nutr Cancer 33: 82–87
Coward L, Barnes NC, Setchell KDR and Barnes S (1993) Genistein, daidzein, and their b-glycoside conjugates: antitumor isoflavones in soybean foods from American and Asian diets. J Agric Food Chem 4: 1961–1967
Duncan AM, Merz BE, Xu X, Nagel TC, Phipps WR and Kurzer MS (1999) Soy isoflavones exert modest hormonal effects in premenopausal women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 84: 192–197
Franke AA, Hankin JH, Yu MC, Maskarinec G, Low SH and Custer LJ (1999) Isoflavone levels in soy foods consumed by multiethnic populations in Singapore and Hawaii. J Agric Food Chem 47: 977–986
Goldin BR and Gorbach SL (1994) Hormone studies and the diet and breast cancer connection. Diet and Breast Cancer, American Institute for Cancer Research, 35–46, Plenum Press: New York
Israel R, Mishell DR Jr, Stone SC, Thorneycroft IH and Moyer DL (1972) Single luteal phase serum progesterone assay as an indicator of ovulation. Am J Obstet Gynceol 112: 1043–1046
Krupps MA, Tierney LM Jr and Jawetz E (1982). Physician’s Handbook, 20th ed, Lange Medical Publications: CA
Lu LJW, Anderson KE, Grady JJ and Nagamani M (1996) Effects of soya consumption for one month on steroid hormones in premenopausal women: implications for breast cancer risk reduction. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 5: 63–70
Messina M and Barnes S (1991) The role of soy products in reducing risk of cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst 83: 541–546
Murphy PA, Song TT, Buseman G and Barua K (1997) Isoflavones in 8 soy-based infant formulas. J Agric Food Chem 45: 4635–4638
Murphy PA, Song TT, Buseman G, Barua K, Beecher GR, Trainer D and Holden J (1999) Isoflavones in retail and institutional soy foods. J Agric Food Chem 47: 2697–2704
Nagata C, Kabuto M, Kurisu Y and Shimizu H (1997) Decreased serum estradiol concentration associated with high dietary intake of soy products in premenopausal Japanese women. Nutr Cancer 29: 228–233
Nagata C, Takatsuka N, Inaba S, Norito K and Shimizu H (1998) Effect of soymilk consumption on serum estrogen concentrations in premenopausal Japanese women. J Natl Cancer Inst 90: 1980–1985
Petrakis N, Barnes S, King EB, Lowenstein J, Wiencke J, Lee MM, Miike R, Kirk M and Coward L (1996) Stimulatory influence of soy protein isolate on breast secretion in pre- and postmenopausal women. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 5: 785–794
Scott JZ, Stanczyk FZ, Goebelsmann U and Mishell DR Jr (1978) A double-antibody radioimmunoassay for serum progesterone using progesterone-3-(O-carboxymethyl) oximino[125I]-iodohistamine as radioligand. Steroids 31: 393–405
Setchell KDR, Cassidy A and Bingham S (1995) Reply to AH Wu and MC Pike (letter). Am J Clin Nutr 62: 152–153
Stanczyk FZ, Shoupe D, Nunez V, Macias-Gonzales P, Vijod MA and Lobo RA (1988) A randomized comparison of normal estradiol delivery in post-menopausal women. Am J Obstet Gynecol 159: 1540–1546
Tew BY, Xu X, Wang HJ, Murphy PA and Hendrich S (1996) A diet high in wheat fiber decreases the bioavailability of soybean isoflavones in a single meal fed to women. J Nutr 126: 871–877
Wakai K, Egami I, Kato K, Kawamura T, Tamakoshi A, Lin Y, Nakayama T, Wada M and Ohno Y (1999) Dietary intake and sources of isoflavones among Japanese. Nutr Cancer 33: 139–145
Wang HJ and Murphy PA (1994) Isoflavone content in commercial soybean foods. J Agric Food Chem 42: 1666–1673
Wu AH and Pike MC (1995) Dietary soy protein and hormonal status in females. (letter). Am J Clin Nutr 62: 151–152
Xu X, Wang HJ, Murphy PA, Cook L and Hendrich S (1994) Daidzein is a more bioavailable soymilk isoflavone than is genistein in adult women. J Nutr 124: 825–832
Xu X, Harris KS, Wang HJ, Murphy PA and Hendrich S (1995) Bioavailability of soybean isoflavones depends upon gut microflora in women. J Nutr 125: 2307–2315
Xu X, Duncan AM, Merz BE and Kurzer MS (1998) Effects of soy isoflavones on estrogen and phytoestrogen metabolism in premenopausal women. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 7: 1101–1108
Zhang Y, Wang GJ, Song TT, Murphy PA and Hendrich S (1999) Glycitein is a more bioavailable isoflavone than is daidzein in humans having moderate fecal isoflavone degradation activity. J Nutr 129: 967–962
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
From twelve months after its original publication, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
About this article
Cite this article
Wu, A., Stanczyk, F., Hendrich, S. et al. Effects of soy foods on ovarian function in premenopausal women. Br J Cancer 82, 1879–1886 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.1999.1218
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.1999.1218
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Comparative study of isoflavones in wild and cultivated soybeans as well as bean products by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and chemometric techniques
European Food Research and Technology (2011)
-
Associations among maternal soy intake, isoflavone levels in urine and blood samples, and maternal and umbilical hormone concentrations (Japan)
Cancer Causes & Control (2006)
-
Circulating enterolactone and risk of breast cancer: a prospective study in New York
British Journal of Cancer (2004)