RESUMO
Endoscopic surveys in the Department of Narino (Colombia) showed that natives of areas of very high risks for stomach cancer have a higher prevalence of atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia than do persons born in other parts of Narino. In these surveys, diets were compared between individuals with and without evidence of these suspect precursor lesions of stomach cancer and between individuals born in the areas designated as high and low risk for stomach cancer. The composite evidence from the comparisons indicated lettuce to be negatively associated with stomach cancer and raised the possibility to a positive association for corn. The relationship of these findings to other epidemiologic evidence and the implications for applying the epidemiology of stomach cancer to the epidemiology of precursor lesions were examined.
Assuntos
Lesões Pré-Cancerosas/epidemiologia , Neoplasias Gástricas/etiologia , Sistema ABO de Grupos Sanguíneos , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Doença Crônica , Colômbia , Dieta , Feminino , Gastrite/epidemiologia , Humanos , Intestinos/patologia , Masculino , Carne , Metaplasia/epidemiologia , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Cloreto de Sódio , Neoplasias Gástricas/epidemiologia , Verduras , Zea maysRESUMO
The premalignant process in the gastric mucosa was studied by gastroscopic surveys of Colombian populations, and the prevalence of superficial gastritis, chronic atrophic gastritis, and intestinal metaplasia was calculated for population samples having a very high gastric cancer risk (Nariño), very low risk (Cartagena), and intermediate risk (Cali). The prevalence of individuals with normal mucosa in successive age groups was used to estimate "depletion" curves, which were taken as indicators of the dynamics of the premalignant process in each community. Differences corresponding to the geographic variation in stomach cancer risk were found: In the high-risk areas of Nariño, around 75% of the population developed some type of gastritis by 45 years of age, whereas in the low- and intermediate-risk population of Cartagena and Cali, the proportion of such lesions did not exceed 50% at age 45 or thereafter. The effect of environmental factors in early life seemed to be important in determining the prevalence of lesions in each population.