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Alcohol and tea consumption in relation to the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Guangdong, China

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Abstract

To investigate whether alcohol and tea consumption has an etiological association with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in a high-incident population, a large scale case-control study was conducted. The study included 2846 individuals in Guangdong Province, China, with 1387 newly diagnosed cases of NPC and 1459 frequency-matched controls. Exposure histories of alcohol and tea consumption were obtained via personal interviews. Information regarding socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, dialect and household type), family history of NPC, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, dietary habits and other potential confounding factors was also studied. An analysis was performed using unconditional logistic regression to calculate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). The risk of NPC was found to be associated with habitual alcohol consumption and tea consumption. Tea consumption has been associated with a decreased occurrence of NPC (OR = 0.62), while consumption of alcohol was associated with a complex effect. Specifically, moderate consumption of alcohol was associated with decreased risk of NPC, while overuse, especially strong distillate spirits, appeared to be a risk factor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China, Guangzhou, 510060, China

    Hong-Lian Ruan, Feng-Hua Xu, Wen-Sheng Liu, Qi-Sheng Feng, Li-Zhen Chen, Yi-**n Zeng & Wei-Hua Jia

  2. School of Public Health, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510080, China

    Hong-Lian Ruan, Feng-Hua Xu & Wei-Hua Jia

  3. Department of Experiment Research, Sun Yat-sen University, Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, China

    Wen-Sheng Liu, Qi-Sheng Feng, Li-Zhen Chen, Yi-**n Zeng & Wei-Hua Jia

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  1. Hong-Lian Ruan
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Ruan, HL., Xu, FH., Liu, WS. et al. Alcohol and tea consumption in relation to the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Guangdong, China. Front. Med. China 4, 448–456 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-010-0280-6

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