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Coffee consumption and risk of rare cancers in Scandinavian countries

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Abstract

Studies on the association between heavy coffee consumption and risk of less frequently diagnosed cancers are scarce. We aimed to quantify the association between filtered, boiled, and total coffee consumption and the risk of bladder, esophageal, kidney, pancreatic, and stomach cancers. We used data from the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study and the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study. Information on coffee consumption was available for 193,439 participants. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards models to calculate hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the investigated cancer sites by category of total, filtered, and boiled coffee consumption. Heavy filtered coffee consumers (≥ 4 cups/day) had a multivariable adjusted HR of 0.74 of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (95% CI 0.57–0.95) when compared with light filtered coffee consumers (≤ 1 cup/day). We did not observe significant associations between total or boiled coffee consumption and any of the investigated cancer sites, neither in the entire study sample nor in analyses stratified by sex. We found an increased risk of bladder cancer among never smokers who were heavy filtered or total coffee consumers, and an increased risk of stomach cancer in never smokers who were heavy boiled coffee consumers. Our data suggest that increased filtered coffee consumption might reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer. We did not find evidence of an association between coffee consumption and the risk of esophageal or kidney cancer. The increased risk of bladder and stomach cancer was confined to never smokers.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the NOWAC Study staff and participants for their contribution. The authors used the services of Trudy Perdix-Thoma for the language editing of the manuscript. We acknowledge the Northern Sweden Diet Database and the funds supporting it, including the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) and the Västerbotten County Council.

Funding

Supported by UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The funding sources had no involvement in the design and conduct of the study; the collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsö, Norway

    Marko Lukic, Guri Skeie & Tonje Braaten

  2. Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Nutritional Research, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Lena Maria Nilsson

  3. Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Bernt Lindahl

  4. Institutt for Samfunnsmedisin, UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet, 9037, Tromsö, Norway

    Marko Lukic

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  1. Marko Lukic
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Correspondence to Marko Lukic.

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Disclaimer Some of the data in this article are from the Cancer Registry of Norway. The Cancer Registry of Norway is not responsible for the analysis or interpretation of the data presented.

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Lukic, M., Nilsson, L.M., Skeie, G. et al. Coffee consumption and risk of rare cancers in Scandinavian countries. Eur J Epidemiol 33, 287–302 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-018-0369-9

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