Implications for cancer epidemiology of differences in dietary intake associated with alcohol consumption

Abstract

Several dietary factors are thought to modify risk for cancers that are known to be associated with alcohol intake. In this study, we sought to identify and describe alcohol-related differences in dietary and nutritional factors that are potential independent predictors of cancer risk or effect modifiers or confounders of alcohol-cancer relationships. Data were obtained from a large hospital-based case-control study that was designed to estimate the cancer risk from various tobacco products. Study subjects consisted of 465 male and 300 female incident lung cancer cases and 870 male and 556 female hospitalized patient controls matched on age (+/- 5 yrs). Nutritional data were analyzed as log-transformed frequencies of 30 food items, 9 factor scores generated to describe overall patterns of dietary intake, and nutrient scores estimating daily intake of fat, vitamin A, fiber, and cholesterol. We observed many more significant differences in nutritional exposures by alcoholic beverage intake than would be expected merely by chance. For males, the most striking relationships included increased meat and egg consumption with increasing alcohol consumption and higher intake of cantaloupe and cold cereal among lighter drinkers. For females, we observed strong inverse relationships between alcohol consumption and reported intake of fruit, cold cereal, and ice cream. We also observed a direct association between alcohol and meat consumption, though it was weaker than that found among men. Findings based on factors and nutrients followed the pattern observed for the individual food items, with highest fat scores and lowest fruit scores among the heaviest drinkers. Implications for nutrient-alcohol interactions and statistical considerations are discussed.

Dietary patterns and risk of prostate cancer in Ontario, Canada

“…The use of food-frequency data presents researchers with the difficulty of analyzing a large number of individual food and beverage items that can be highly intercorrelated. 31 Principal components analysis has been used to overcome this problem of colinearity by identifying dietary patterns that may be assessed in relation to risk. 18-20 , 30 , 31 The ultimate goal of factor analysis is to derive dietary patterns that provide a meaningful conceptualization and summary of the data.…”

“…18-20 , 30 , 31 The ultimate goal of factor analysis is to derive dietary patterns that provide a meaningful conceptualization and summary of the data. 31 Examining the dietary patterns of a population to study a dietcancer relationship may be done by assessing the combination of foods that provide structure to diets. Dietary patterns have been assessed extensively in relation to colon cancer, [18][19][20]30,31 and it is contended that patterns better represent and more accurately estimate the role of diet in cancer risk than individual nutrients.…”

“…31 Examining the dietary patterns of a population to study a dietcancer relationship may be done by assessing the combination of foods that provide structure to diets. Dietary patterns have been assessed extensively in relation to colon cancer, [18][19][20]30,31 and it is contended that patterns better represent and more accurately estimate the role of diet in cancer risk than individual nutrients. 19 Specifically, results from Slattery et al 17,18 support the hypothesis that a Western-type dietary pattern, consisting of high levels of meat consumption and low levels of vegetables, is associated with an elevated risk of colon cancer.…”

“…For consistency with other investigations that have examined the relationship between dietary patterns and other cancer sites, [18][19][20]30,31 we used a varimax rotation and an eigenvalue criterion (corresponding to the amount of variance explained) of > 1.50 to identify the most meaningful factors in the population under study. Food groups that loaded (or were correlated) at 60.25 or greater were considered to be making a contribution to the dietary pattern factor.…”

Dietary patterns associated with vitamin/mineral supplement use and smoking among women of the E3N–EPIC cohort

“…In our study, the alcohol/meat products pattern was strongly associated with past and current smoking. Associations between alcohol and meat consumption, on the one hand (Hebert and Kabat, 1991;Kesse et al, 2001), and between alcohol and tobacco use, on the other hand (Schulze et al, 2001;Engeset et al, 2005), have been described elsewhere. The latter association has usually been described for heavy drinkers and smokers; thus, it is of interest to observe this relationship between alcohol and tobacco in our population of well-educated women with low-to-moderate alcohol and tobacco consumption.…”