A retrospective study of renal cancer with special reference to coffee and animal protein consumption

Abstract

SHENNAN (1973) drew attention to a strong correlation between coffee consumption and national rates of mortality from renal cancer (simple correlation coefficient r =079). We obtained similar results using incidence as well as mortality rates, and found also a strong geographical correlation between renal cancer incidence and the consumption of animal protein (r 0 82; Armstrong and Doll, 1975). The present study was therefore undertaken to investigate the association between these variables and renal cancer in individuals. We sought also information regarding exposure to other agents which have been reported to be associated with renal cancer in either man or animals, such as tobacco (Bennington and Laubscher, 1968;Schmauz and Cole, 1974;Wynder, Mabuchi and Whitmore, 1974), lead (Van Esch, Van Genderen and Vink, 1962), aromatic amines (Poole-Wilson, 1969), leather (Schmauz and Cole, 1974), compound analgesics (Johansson etal., 1974) and 9 sulphonamides (Hansen and Bichel, 1952).The number of cases studied is small (139) and is effectively made even smaller by the need to consider separately the 2 main types of renal cancer in adults (adenocarcinoma of the parenchyma and transitional cell carcinoma of the pelvis). Statistically significant results could not be expected, therefore, unless we had isolated a factor that greatly increased the risk of the disease. In fact, few of the factors examined appear to have any effect but, with the numbers involved, the possibility of small effects, of the order of two-or three-fold increases in risk, cannot be excluded. Renal cancer is, however, a sufficiently rare disease that it will be difficult for any one group of investigators to accumulate enough experience to provide decisive answers. We are therefore reporting our results with a minimum of description but have tabulated them in some detail so that they can be combined with other observations in the future.

International renal cell cancer study. VII. role of diet

“…In contrast to the majority of previous studies (Asal et al, 1988;McCredie et al, 1988;Talamini et al, 1990;Maclure and Willett, 1990;Kreiger et al, 1993;Stensvold and Jacobsen, 1994), we observed a significantly increased risk of RCC in female coffee drinkers, as did some other investigations (Wynder et al, 1974;Armstrong et al, 1976;McLaughlin et al, 1984;Yu et al, 1986;Benhamou et al, 1993). The positive finding in one gender only and the lack of dose-response relationship argues against a causal role of coffee.…”

Black tea consumption and cancer risk: A prospective study

“…A very large case-control study showed a slight increase in bladder cancer risk among heavier female tea drinkers (_ 1 cup/day) but not so for the males (Hartge et al, 1983). Other authors have not found an association between tea intake and the risk of bladder cancer (Morgan & Jain, 1974;Miller et al, 1978;Howe et al, 1980;Sullivan, 1982), pancreatic cancer (MacMahon et al, 1981), or kidney cancer (Armstrong et al, 1976). Rectal cancer was not significantly associated with (black) tea intake in two studies (Phillips & Snowdon, 1985;Tajima & Tominaga, 1985), although colon cancer has shown a positive association (Tajima & Tominaga, 1985;Stocks, 1970).…”

Regular use of analgesics is a risk factor for renal cell carcinoma

“…Until recently, only three case-control studies (Armstrong et al, 1976;McLaughlin et al, 1985;McCredie et al, 1988) and one cohort study (Paganini-Hill et al, 1989) had investigated the issue. Two of these studies (McLaughlin et al, 1985;McCredie et al, 1988) examined the relationship between phenacetin use and RCC risk, and consistently observed a positive exposure-disease association.…”