Meat intake and bladder cancer risk in a Swedish prospective cohort.
BACKGROUND
High meat consumption could potentially increase the risk of bladder cancer, but findings from epidemiologic studies are inconsistent. We prospectively examined the association between meat intake and bladder cancer risk in a population-based cohort study.


METHODS
We prospectively followed 82,002 Swedish women and men who were free from cancer and completed a food-frequency questionnaire in 1997. Incident cases of bladder cancer were identified in the Swedish cancer registries. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), adjusted for age, sex, education, smoking status, pack-years of smoking, and total energy intake.


RESULTS
During a mean follow-up of 9.4 years, 485 incident cases of bladder cancer (76 women and 409 men) were ascertained in the cohort. We observed no association between the intake of total or any specific type of meat and the risk of bladder cancer. The multivariate HRs (95% CIs) comparing the highest and the lowest category of intake were 1.05 (0.71-1.55) for total meat, 1.00 (0.71-1.41) for red meat, 1.01 (0.80-1.28) for processed meats, 0.96 (0.70-1.30) for chicken/poultry, and 0.92 (0.65-1.30) for fried meats/fish. The associations did not vary by sex or smoking status.


CONCLUSIONS
These results do not support the hypothesis that intake of red meat, processed meat, poultry, or fried meats/fish is associated with the risk of developing bladder cancer.
Larsson
Susanna C
SC
Division of Nutritional Epidemiology, The National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Box 210, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden. susanna.larsson@ki.se
Johansson
Jan-Erik
JE
Andersson
Swen-Olof
SO
Wolk
Alicja
A
D015331:Cohort Studies; D004034:Diet Surveys; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008460:Meat / Q000633:toxicity*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*