Reproductive and hormonal factors and risk of renal cell carcinoma among women in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.

BACKGROUND: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is twice as common among men compared with women, and hormonal factors have been suggested to partially explain this difference. There is currently little evidence on the roles of reproductive and hormonal risk factors in RCC aetiology. MATERIALS & METHODS: We investigated associations of age at menarche and age at menopause, pregnancy-related factors, hysterectomy and ovariectomy and exogenous hormone use with RCC risk among 298,042 women in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. RESULTS: During 15 years of follow-up, 438 RCC cases were identified. Parous women had higher rates of RCC compared with nulliparous women (HR = 1.71, 95% CI 1.18, 2.46), and women who were older at age of first pregnancy had lower rates of RCC (30 years + vs. <20 years HR = 0.53, 95% CI 0.34, 0.82). Additionally, we identified a positive association for hysterectomy (HR = 1.43 95% CI 1.09, 1.86) and bilateral ovariectomy (HR = 1.67, 95% CI 1.13, 2.47), but not unilateral ovariectomy (HR = 0.99, 95% CI 0.61, 1.62) with RCC risk. No clear associations were found for age at menarche, age at menopause or exogenous hormone use. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that parity and reproductive organ surgeries may play a role in RCC aetiology.

Separate and combined associations of obesity and metabolic health with coronary heart disease: a pan-European case-cohort analysis.

Aims: The hypothesis of 'metabolically healthy obesity' implies that, in the absence of metabolic dysfunction, individuals with excess adiposity are not at greater cardiovascular risk. We tested this hypothesis in a large pan-European prospective study. Methods and results: We conducted a case-cohort analysis in the 520 000-person European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study ('EPIC-CVD'). During a median follow-up of 12.2 years, we recorded 7637 incident coronary heart disease (CHD) cases. Using cut-offs recommended by guidelines, we defined obesity and overweight using body mass index (BMI), and metabolic dysfunction ('unhealthy') as ≥ 3 of elevated blood pressure, hypertriglyceridaemia, low HDL-cholesterol, hyperglycaemia, and elevated waist circumference. We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) within each country using Prentice-weighted Cox proportional hazard regressions, accounting for age, sex, centre, education, smoking, diet, and physical activity. Compared with metabolically healthy normal weight people (reference), HRs were 2.15 (95% CI: 1.79; 2.57) for unhealthy normal weight, 2.33 (1.97; 2.76) for unhealthy overweight, and 2.54 (2.21; 2.92) for unhealthy obese people. Compared with the reference group, HRs were 1.26 (1.14; 1.40) and 1.28 (1.03; 1.58) for metabolically healthy overweight and obese people, respectively. These results were robust to various sensitivity analyses. Conclusion: Irrespective of BMI, metabolically unhealthy individuals had higher CHD risk than their healthy counterparts. Conversely, irrespective of metabolic health, overweight and obese people had higher CHD risk than lean people. These findings challenge the concept of 'metabolically healthy obesity', encouraging population-wide strategies to tackle obesity.

Plasma carotenoids, vitamin C, tocopherols, and retinol and the risk of breast cancer in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort.

BACKGROUND: Carotenoids and vitamin C are thought to be associated with reduced cancer risk because of their antioxidative capacity. OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the associations of plasma carotenoid, retinol, tocopherol, and vitamin C concentrations and risk of breast cancer. DESIGN: In a nested case-control study within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort, 1502 female incident breast cancer cases were included, with an oversampling of premenopausal (n = 582) and estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) cases (n = 462). Controls (n = 1502) were individually matched to cases by using incidence density sampling. Prediagnostic samples were analyzed for α-carotene, ß-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, ß-cryptoxanthin, retinol, α-tocopherol, γ-tocopherol, and vitamin C. Breast cancer risk was computed according to hormone receptor status and age at diagnosis (proxy for menopausal status) by using conditional logistic regression and was further stratified by smoking status, alcohol consumption, and body mass index (BMI). All statistical tests were 2-sided. RESULTS: In quintile 5 compared with quintile 1, α-carotene (OR: 0.61; 95% CI: 0.39, 0.98) and ß-carotene (OR: 0.41; 95% CI: 0.26, 0.65) were inversely associated with risk of ER- breast tumors. The other analytes were not statistically associated with ER- breast cancer. For estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) tumors, no statistically significant associations were found. The test for heterogeneity between ER- and ER+ tumors was statistically significant only for ß-carotene (P-heterogeneity = 0.03). A higher risk of breast cancer was found for retinol in relation to ER-/progesterone receptor-negative tumors (OR: 2.37; 95% CI: 1.20, 4.67; P-heterogeneity with ER+/progesterone receptor positive = 0.06). We observed no statistically significant interaction between smoking, alcohol, or BMI and all investigated plasma analytes (based on tertile distribution). CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that higher concentrations of plasma ß-carotene and α-carotene are associated with lower breast cancer risk of ER- tumors.

Variation at ABO histo-blood group and FUT loci and diffuse and intestinal gastric cancer risk in a European population.

ABO blood serotype A is known to be associated with risk of gastric cancer (GC), but little is known how ABO alleles and the fucosyltransferase (FUT) enzymes and genes which are involved in Lewis antigen formation [and in Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) binding and pathogenicity] may be related to GC risk in a European population. The authors conducted an investigation of 32 variants at ABO and FUT1-7 loci and GC risk in a case-control study of 365 cases and 1,284 controls nested within the EPIC cohort (the EPIC-Eurgast study). Four variants (including rs505922) in ABO, and allelic blood group A (AO+AA, odds ratio=1.84, 95%CI=1.20-2.80) were associated with diffuse-type GC; however, conditional models with other ABO variants indicated that the associations were largely due to allelic blood group A. One variant in FUT5 was also associated with diffuse-type GC, and four variants (and haplotypes) in FUT2 (Se), FUT3 (Le) and FUT6 with intestinal-type GC. Further, one variant in ABO, two in FUT3 and two in FUT6 were associated with H. pylori infection status in controls, and two of these (in FUT3 and FUT6) were weakly associated with intestinal-type GC risk. None of the individual variants surpassed a Bonferroni corrected p-value cutoff of 0.0016; however, after a gene-based permutation test, two loci [FUT3(Le)/FUT5/FUT6 and FUT2(Se)] were significantly associated with diffuse- and intestinal-type GC, respectively. Replication and functional studies are therefore recommended to clarify the role of ABO and FUT alleles in H. pylori infection and subtype-specific gastric carcinogenesis.