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Short Communication |
1 Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri"; 2 Divisione di Epidemiologia e Biostatistica, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia; 3 Istituto di Statistica Medica e Biometria, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy; 4 Unità di Epidemiologia e Biostatistica, Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, Aviano (PN), Italy; 5 Istituto di Igiene ed Epidemiologia, Universita' degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy; 6 IARC, Lyon, France; 7 Servizio di Epidemiologia, Istituto Tumori "Fondazione Pascale," Naples, Italy; and 8 Istituto Nazionale per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Genoa, Italy
Requests for reprints: Marta Rossi, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri," Via Eritrea 62, 20157 Milan, Italy. Phone: 39-0239014541; Fax: 39-0233200231. E-mail: mrossi{at}marionegri.it
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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Four cohort studies investigated the relation between flavonoids and colorectal cancer and gave inconsistent results. The Iowa Women's Health study (8), on a cohort of 34,651 postmenopausal women, including 132 rectal and 635 colon cancers, found an inverse association between intake of catechin (a flavan-3-ols) and rectal cancer incidence [odds ratio (OR), 0.55, 95% confidence intervals (CI), 0.32-0.95 for the highest versus the lowest quintile], but not for colon cancer (OR, 1.10; 95% CI, 0.85-1.44). In the Finnish
-Tocopherol, ß-Carotene Study cohort (9) of 27,110 male smokers, including 133 colorectal cancer, there was a borderline direct association with intake of the sum of flavonols and flavones (OR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.00-2.70). No significant associations were found in a Dutch case-cohort study (10) of 3,726 subjects, including 603 cases, with respect to flavonols and the flavone luteolin (OR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.71-1.32). Similarly, a Finnish cohort (11, 12) of about 10,000 men and women, examined at two different times, with 72 and 90 colorectal cancers, respectively, found no association with single compounds of flavonols and flavanones (OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.32-1.68; ref. 11) and total flavonoids (computed as the sum of flavonols, flavanones and flavones; OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.43-1.64; ref. 12). Thus, the epidemiologic evidence is still inconclusive, also because most studies included a small number of cases or analyzed the effects of total flavonoids or single compounds only. Moreover, reliable data on the flavonoid content of foods has become available only recently (13, 14), and flavonoids have been categorized in six classes (iisoflavones, anthocyanidins, flavan-3-ols, flavanones, flavones, and flavonols), according to their chemical structure and biological activity.
The aim of this article is to investigate the relation between different classes of flavonoids and colorectal cancer using data from a large multicentric case-control study of colon and rectum cancer conducted in Italy (15).
| Materials and Methods |
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Cases were subjects with histologically confirmed colorectal cancer diagnosed no longer than 1 year before the interview and no previous diagnoses of cancer. Overall, 1,225 subjects with cancer of the colon (688 men and 537 women, median age 62 years, range 19-74 years) and 728 with cancer of the rectum or recto-sigmoid junction (437 men and 291 women, median age 62 years, range 23-74 years) were included (15).
Controls were patients with no history of cancer admitted to major teaching and general hospitals in the same catchment areas of cases for acute and nonneoplastic conditions, unrelated to hormonal or digestive tract diseases or to long-term modifications of diet. They included 2,073 men and 2,081 women aged 19-74 years (median age 58 years); 27% were admitted for traumas, 24% for other orthopedic disorders, 18% for acute surgical conditions, and 31% for eye and other miscellaneous diseases (15). About 4% of subjects invited to participate in the study refused.
The same structured questionnaire and coding manual were used in each center, and interviewers were centrally trained. The questionnaire included information on sociodemographic characteristics, lifetime smoking and alcohol-drinking habits, physical activity, anthropometric measures, a problem-oriented personal medical history, and family history of cancer.
Food-Frequency Questionnaire
A reproducible (16) and valid (17) food-frequency questionnaire was used to assess the patients' usual diet during the 2 years before cancer diagnosis or hospital admission, including 78 foods or food groups, as well as complex recipes, plus questions aimed at assessing fat intake and general dietary habits. The average weekly consumption of each item was recorded.
Energy was computed using an Italian food composition database, supplemented with other published data (18). We obtained food and beverage content in terms of six subclasses of flavonoids (isoflavones, anthocyanidins, flavan-3-ols, flavanones, flavones, and flavonols) according to the data recently published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (13, 14), further integrated with other sources (19). Major flavonoids were genistein and daidzein for isoflavones, cyanidin and malvidin for anthocyanidines, epicatechin and catechin for flavan-3-ols, hesperitin and narigerin for flavanones, apigenin and luteolin for flavones and quercetin, myricetin and kaempferol for flavonols.
Statistical Analysis
We computed "calorie-adjusted" flavonoid intakes using the residual method suggested by Willett and Stampfer (20). The calorie-adjusted flavonoids were categorized into approximate quintiles based on the controls distribution, and the corresponding OR and 95% CI were estimated using unconditional multiple logistic regression models (21). All models included terms for sex, age (5-year categories), study center, family history of colorectal cancer, education (<7, 7-11,
12 years), alcohol consumption (quartiles), body mass index (quintiles), and occupational physical activity (low, medium, high). Moreover, calorie-adjusted flavonoids were entered as continuous variables, with a measurement unit equal to the difference between the upper cutpoints of the 4th and 1st quintile. Tests for trend were based on the likelihood ratio test between models with and without a linear term for each class of flavonoids. We also fitted models across strata of sex, age, and body mass index. Further adjustment for other potential confounders yielded similar results.
Polytomous logistic regression was used to estimate separate ORs for colon and rectum cancer and to test for heterogeneity between the two sites (22).
| Results |
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In Table 2 , we analyzed the relation between flavonoids and cancer of the colon and rectum separately. The estimates did not differ substantially with respect to the ones for colorectal cancer, and the heterogeneity terms were not significant.
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60 years), and body mass index (<25,
25 kg/m2). Interaction test confirmed that risk patterns were generally consistent across strata.
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| Discussion |
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To our knowledge, no other epidemiologic study investigated the role of isoflavones and anthocyanidins on colorectal cancer, whereas with respect to the remaining classes, our data are not completely in agreement with some previous studies. However, most previous investigations examined the effects of selected compounds only rather than the classes of flavonoids that we considered (8-12).
Flavonoids have several important biological functions, which may be related to cancer risk. In vitro and animal model systems showed that they influence signal transduction pathways, stimulate apoptosis, and inhibit inflammation and proliferation in human cancer cell lines. Selected flavonoids may also increase transcription of phase II detoxifying enzymes involved in the clearance of procarcinogenic substances (2, 23).
The strengths and weaknesses of hospital-based case-control studies (21) should be considered in evaluating our results. Among the limitations are the questions concerning the adaptability of U.S. flavonoid food composition data to the Italian diet, and the fact that the questionnaire was not specifically designed to investigate flavonoids. To our knowledge, no studies using biomarkers of flavonoid intake have been conducted to date. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate, in this as well as other studies, the imprecision of exposure measurement due, among others, to the variation of the food quantities in the recipes and the variability in plant flavonoid content attributable to several factors, such as sunlight and heat. Dietary habits can be influenced by recent diagnosis of cancer or by the fact that the disease process would have been well under way during the reference period of the food-frequency questionnaire (2 years before the diagnosis or hospital admission). The dietary habits of hospital controls may differ from those of the general population, but we took great care to include only patients admitted to hospital for acute conditions not related to major changes in diet and other lifestyle factors. Moreover, the same interview setting and catchment areas for cases and controls, and the almost complete participation rate are reassuring. Among the strengths of this study are the uniquely large data set, the high intake of fruit and vegetables in this population, the satisfactory reproducibility and validity of the food-frequency questionnaire (16, 17), and the ability to control for total energy intake and other major potential confounding factors.
The Italian population has a high and varied consumption of vegetables and fruit (24), which has been associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer (15, 25). Although the causality of this association is still debated, it has been suggested that some bioactive compounds in fruit and vegetables, and, among these, flavonoids, account for this association.
The correlations of the various classes of flavonoids with fruit ranged between 0.04 and 0.56, and that with total vegetables between 0.03 and 0.25. Adjustment for isoflavones, flavones, or flavonols reduced the strength of the inverse association between vegetables consumption and colorectal cancer, whereas adjustment for flavonols only reduced the association with fruit. Conversely, allowance for fruit and vegetables consumption changed only weakly, if at all, the observed associations with flavonoids. This suggests that, on one side, a diet rich in fruit and vegetables does not alone account for the observed protections, at least for some classes, and, on the other side, the relation with fruit and vegetables is not totally explained by flavonoid intake.
Similarly, allowance for vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoids, folate, fiber, and macronutrient intake did not modify the estimated ORs by >10%. In this population, vegetables or bean soup (37%) and pulses (12%) were the major sources for isoflavones; wine (65%) and red fruits (22%) for anthocyanidins; spinach or chards (27%), vegetables or bean soup (19%) and tea (14%) for flavones; and apples or pears (18%) and wine (12%) for flavonols. The lack of association for flavanones, deriving from citrus fruit (90%), is in accordance with previous results from this study (15), which did not find a relation between citrus fruit and colorectal cancer risk. We did not consider flavonoids deriving from tea separately because tea consumption was too limited in this population.
In conclusion, we found that some classes of flavonoids, in particular isoflavones, anthocyanidins, flavones, and flavonols, significantly decreased the risk of colorectal cancer and could account, at least in part, for the protective effect of vegetable and fruit consumption against colorectal cancer in this population.
| Footnotes |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
Received 1/11/06; revised 5/11/06; accepted 5/30/06.
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