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Diet impacts mortality from cancer: results from the multiethnic cohort study

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Abstract

Purpose

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States and mortality varies by ethnicity. The objective of this study was to examine the association between cancer mortality and dietary intake among a large multiethnic population.

Methods

A prospective cohort design was used to examine cancer mortality among 146,389 participants. Multiethnic cohort study participants represent five ethnic groups: African American, Native Hawaiian, Japanese American, Latino, and Caucasian. Hazard ratios for cancer mortality by intake levels of five food groups and discretionary fat were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models stratified by sex and ethnicity.

Results

There were a total of 2,028 male and 1,464 female fatal cancer cases at the end of follow-up. Among Japanese American men only, there was a significant protective effect seen in those reporting a high grain intake (HR = 0.49, 95 % CI 0.35–0.69); there was no effect of grain consumption in any other ethnic-sex group. There was no evidence that ethnicity modified associations between fruit, vegetable, meat, dairy, or discretionary fat intake and cancer mortality among men. Associations between food group consumption and risk for cancer mortality among women were similar across ethnic groups.

Conclusions

The considerable reduction in cancer risk associated with high grain consumption among a specific ethnic-sex group, Japanese American men, warrants further investigation. Additional research is needed to validate this observation and determine whether this was a chance finding, or possibly due to differential intake of specific grain subtypes, and/or related to a sex-specific cancer type.

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Abbreviations

95 % CI:

95 % Confidence interval

FCT:

Food composition table

HR:

Hazard ratio

ICD:

International classifications of diseases

MEC:

Multiethnic cohort

NIH-AARP:

National Institutes of Health-American Association of Retired Persons

QFFQ:

Quantitative food frequency questionnaire

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (Grant Number R37 CA54821) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA-NRI New Investigator Award, Grant Number 2002-00793).

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, University of Alberta, 5-10 University Terrace, 8303 112 Street, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2T4, Canada

    Sangita Sharma, Shelly Vik & Mohammadreza Pakseresht

  2. Epidemiology Program, Cancer Center, University of Hawaii, 1236 Lauhala Street, Honolulu, HI, 96813, USA

    Lucy Shen & Laurence N. Kolonel

Authors
  1. Sangita Sharma
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  2. Shelly Vik
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  3. Mohammadreza Pakseresht
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  4. Lucy Shen
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  5. Laurence N. Kolonel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sangita Sharma.

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Sharma, S., Vik, S., Pakseresht, M. et al. Diet impacts mortality from cancer: results from the multiethnic cohort study. Cancer Causes Control 24, 685–693 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-013-0148-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-013-0148-6

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