Bioactive Potential of β-Sitosterol in Cancer: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This article seeks to carry out a systematic review of the literature on the therapeutic effect of β-sitosterol on cancer. The PI-CO strategy was used to prepare the guiding question, covering in silico, in vitro and in vivo studies in the Pubmed, Virtual Health Library and Sci-enceDirect databases, with descriptors “beta sitosterol” and “cancer” combined by the Boolean operator “AND”, selecting publications from the last five years (2019-2024), in compliance with the STROBE scale, registered on the PROSPERO Platform and following PRISMA recommendations. Ten articles were chosen for the study and all talked about the bioactive potential and biological mechanisms of β-sitosterol in different types of cancer, experimental dosage of β-sitosterol, metabolic route and results of interest. β-sitosterol has demonstrated strong evidence of its anticarcinogenic potential, occurring in metabolic pathways linked to several types of cancer, with a negative relationship with the progression of colon, liver, pancreas, mouth, larynx, ovarian, prostate and mammary cancer cells. However, in in vitro and in vivo assays, β-sitosterol did not show any evidence of toxicity to healthy cells. Still, planned clinical trials are necessary to support the use of this phytoactive in the prevention and treatment of cancer.