The Role of Red Meat and Flavonoid Consumption on Cancer Prevention: The Korean Cancer Screening Examination Cohort

• Published in: Nutrients Vol. 9; no. 9; p. 938
• Main Authors: Kim, So Young, Wie, Gyung-Ah, Cho, Yeong-Ah, Kang, Hyun-Hee, Ryu, Kyoung-A, Yoo, Min-Kyong, Jun, Shinyoung, Kim, Seong-Ah, Ha, Kyungho, Kim, Jeongseon, Cho, Yoon Hee, Shin, Sangah, Joung, Hyojee
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 25.08.2017; MDPI
• Subjects: Animals; Antioxidants - therapeutic use; Cancer; Cancer screening; Cattle; Cohort Studies; cohort study; diet; Early Detection of Cancer; Female; flavonoid; Flavonoids; Flavonoids - therapeutic use; Follow-Up Studies; Goats; Health risk assessment; Health risks; Healthy Diet - ethnology; Humans; Incidence; Male; Meat; Meat - adverse effects; Meat Products - adverse effects; Medical screening; Neoplasms - epidemiology; Neoplasms - ethnology; Neoplasms - etiology; Neoplasms - prevention & control; Nutrition Surveys; Patient Compliance - ethnology; Proportional Hazards Models; Prospective Studies; red meat; Registries; Republic of Korea - epidemiology; Risk Factors; Sheep, Domestic; Statistical analysis; Sus scrofa; cancer; cohort study; diet; flavonoid; red meat
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu9090938

Markedly increased red meat consumption is a cancer risk factor, while dietary flavonoids may help prevent the disease. The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations of red meat and flavonoid consumption with cancer risk, based on data from 8024 subjects, drawn from the 2004-2008 Cancer Screening Examination Cohort of the Korean National Cancer Center. Hazard ratios (HRs) were obtained by using a Cox proportional hazard model. During the mean follow-up period of 10.1 years, 443 cases were newly diagnosed with cancer. After adjusting for age, there was a significant correlation between cancer risk and the daily intake of ≥43 g of red meat per day (HR 1.31; 95% CI 1.01, 1.71; = 0.045), and total flavonoid intake tended to decrease cancer risk (HR 0.70; 95% CI 0.49, 0.99; highest vs. lowest quartile; -trend = 0.073) in men. Following multivariable adjustment, there were no statistically significant associations between flavonoid intake and overall cancer risk in individuals with high levels of red meat intake. Men with low daily red meat intake exhibited an inverse association between flavonoid consumption and cancer incidence (HR 0.41; 95% CI 0.21, 0.80; highest vs. lowest; -trend = 0.017). Additional research is necessary to clarify the effects of flavonoid consumption on specific cancer incidence, relative to daily red meat intake.