Circulating Levels of Inflammatory Markers and Cancer Risk in the Health Aging and Body Composition Cohort

DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-05-0316 Published October 2005

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Figure 1.
Dose-response relationships between circulating levels of inflammatory markers and the risk of cancer events: IL-6 (A), CRP (B), and TNF-α (C).
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Figure 2.
Time trends in the relationships between circulating levels of inflammatory markers and the risk of cancer events: IL-6 (A), CRP (B), and TNF-α (C). FU, follow-up.

Table 1.

Baseline characteristics of the study population

	Noncases 25%-median-75% or % (n = 2,169)	Cancer cases 25%-median-75% or % (n = 296)	P*
Follow-up time (mean years)	5.92	2.85
Age	71-73-76	71-74-76	0.09
Gender (females; %)	55	38	<0.001
Race (Caucasian; %)^†	55	51	0.16
Site (Memphis; %)^†	50	48	0.49
Education (%)
Less than high school	27	25	0.30
High school	33	31
Postsecondary	40	44
Smoking status (%)
Never	46	33	<0.001
Former	44	52
Current	10	16
Pack-years (continuous)	0-2-27	0-15-43
Comorbid conditions (%)
Cardiovascular disease	23	23	0.98
Diabetes	16	16	0.91
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other pulmonary diseases	12	12	0.73
BMI	24.1-27.0-30.2	24.2-27.1-30.7^‡	0.71
Abdominal visceral fat area (cm²)	93-129-178	99-138-183^†	0.08
Physical activity, kcal/wk (%)
0-499.9	37	40	0.15
500-999.9	34	35
≥1,000	29	25
Medication use (%)
NSAIDs	23	18	0.04
Corticosteroids	4	3	0.38
ACE inhibitors	15	17	0.43
Statins	12	14	0.34

↵* For continuous variables: P for Wilcoxon rank test (two-group comparison). For categorical variables: P for χ² test.
↵† Other categories are as follows: race, African American; site, Pittsburgh.
↵‡ Only 185 cases ascertained 2 years after baseline examination (see Materials and Methods).

Table 2.

Distribution of inflammatory markers in the study population

Inflammatory marker	Range	Mean (SD)	5%	25%	50%	75%	95%
IL-6, pg/mL (n = 2,339)	0.21-15.96	2.42 (1.99)	0.72	1.26	1.83	2.82	6.39
CRP, mg/L (n = 2,432)	0.15-85.18	3.07 (4.99)	0.64	1.01	1.69	3.17	9.99
TNF-α, pg/mL (n = 2,298)	0.57-29.55	3.44 (1.70)	1.59	2.14	3.14	4.06	6.21

Table 3.

Association between incident cancer events and inflammatory markers

↵* Log-transformed variables: the HR present the associations with the inflammatory markers related to a unit change on the log scale.
↵† HR adjusted for age, gender, race, and site.

Table 4.

Associations between inflammatory markers and common cancers

↵* Log-transformed variables: the HR present the associations with the inflammatory markers related to a unit change on the log scale.
↵† HR adjusted for age, gender, race, and site.