The Association between Circulating Carotenoids and Risk of Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies.

"Conflict of interest The authors report no conflicts of interest."

"Funding Financial support for conception, design, data analysis, and manuscript drafting comes from Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran (no. 63955)."

"A systematic search was conducted by 2 independent researchers (MKD and SE) using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science up to 30 November, 2022. The detailed search strategy is provided in . In brief, the following terms were used in the search strategy to identify observational studies considering carotenoids and breast cancer risk: “Carotenoids,” “α-carotene,” “β-carotene,” “Lycopene,” “Lutein,” “Cryptoxanthin,” “zeaxanthin” AND “breast cancer,” “Breast Neoplasms,” “breast carcinoma,” and “mammary cancer.” To avoid missing any relevant articles, we conducted a manual search of included articles’ reference lists. We also performed a manual web-based search in Google Scholar using combination of “carotenoids” and “breast cancer.” No time or language restriction was applied. Any disagreement was solved by consulting the principal researcher (LA). We followed the PRISMA guidelines. The study was registered at http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/Prospero (registration no. CRD42023434983). This study was registered at PROSPERO as CRD42023434983."