Change in food intake frequency at five years after baseline in the JACC study.
BACKGROUND
In a cohort study, information on an individual is taken at baseline, after which it usually remains fixed. There is some risk that this will lead to misclassification and cause weakened or biased results. To prevent such distortion, following up of exposure is important, although it is still scarce in practice.


METHODS
In the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer Risk (JACC Study) sponsored by Monbusho (Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan), 37,838 (14,531 males and 23,307 females) subjects out of a cohort of 127,477 inhabitants answered an interim questionnaire on food intake frequency consisting of 33 items about five years after registration. The long-term reproducibility was assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficients and agreement. From data at two time points, longitudinal change, age effect, and secular trend were examined. Subjective changes in these items at the time of the interim survey were also compared to longitudinal changes.


RESULTS
Spearman's correlation coefficients varied from 0.27 (fruit juice in males) to 0.55 (beef in females and milk in males), and agreement from 29.9% (fruit juice in males) to 61.4% (liver in females). Correlation was relatively stronger in meat and dairy products and weaker in vegetables and fruits. In both males and females, most increased food item was edible wild plants followed by confectioneries (males) and yogurt (females).


CONCLUSIONS
Over five years, food intake was considerably changed. These interim data could be used for a long-term follow-up study to prevent the results becoming weakened or biased.
Suzuki
Sadao
S
Department of Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Japan. ssuzuki@med.nagoya-cu.ac.jp
Kawado
Miyuki
M
Hashimoto
Shuji
S
Tokudome
Shinkan
S
Yoshimura
Takesumi
T
Tamakoshi
Akiko
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015331:Cohort Studies; D002149:Energy Intake; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012307:Risk Factors; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires