Search resultsAlcohol consumption and risk of gastric cardia adenocarcinoma and gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma: A 16-year prospective analysis from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health cohort
Abstract The role of alcoholic beverages in the etiology of gastric cancer is unclear. Recent summaries showed a positive association between higher alcohol intake and gastric cancer risk, but the magnitude of association is small, there is moderate heterogeneity among studies, and most cases were from Asian populations. We prospectively investigated the associations of alcohol consumption with gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA) and gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma (GNCA) in 490,605 adults, aged 50-71 years at baseline who participated in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Alcohol consumption in the past year was assessed at baseline by questionnaire and defined as total grams of ethanol intake per day or as a categorical variable: non-drinker, up to or including one drink/day, one to three drinks/day, and greater than three drinks/day. We used multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression to calculate the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for associations between alcohol intake and risk of gastric adenocarcinomas. Through 2011, 662 incident cases of GCA and 713 of GNCA occurred. We found no association between higher alcohol consumption and GCA or GNCA, when examined as total alcoholic beverage intake individual beverage types of beer, wine and liquor. Furthermore, we observed no association by stratum of sex, ethnic group, educational level, or smoking status. We did, however, observe lower risk of GNCA among participants who drank up to one drink per day (HR=0.81, 95%CIs:0.67-0.97) compared to nondrinkers. In conclusion, alcohol consumption was not associated with increased risk of GCA or GNCA in this large US cohort. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.