Epidemiology Of Diet And Cancer

This volume investigates the links between the incidence of diet-related cancers and dietary patterns within Europe. It presents current understanding of the major cancers thought to be caused by diet alongside detailed data on regional variations in dietary composition, and collates these sets of information to illustrate associations between food

The book is the first one published exclusively on the field of nutritional epidemiology of breast cancer. It summarizes the currently existing knowledge, with an updated and comprehensive international bibliography (~ 1.000 references). The authors also performed a review on the epidemiological studies on nutrition and breast cancer carried out in Uruguay between 1994 and 2011, which allowed exploring and identifying the main risk and protective factors for the disease in this high-risk country. Epidemiologists, Nutritionists, Public Health managers and breast specialists –from the prevention to the treatment fields – will find in this book a unique source of technical information, which will contribute in expanding their knowledge and view of the disease.

Various estimates suggest that between 30-40% of all human cancers are related to dietary patterns. Strong epidemiological evidence from population and twin studies points to dietary constituents that either contribute or protect against the development o

The search for the links between diet, nutritional and metabolic factors and cancer aetiology is an area of research, which over the past two decades has attracted increasing attention both from a scientific and a public health point of view. In this context, the Europe Against Cancer Program has supported the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), a study involving about half a million volunteers in 10 European countries. This book, derived from the European Conference on Nutrition and Cancer (IARC, Lyon 2001, with the support by the Directorate General for Public Health and Consumer Protection of the EU), gives an update of recent scientific developments in the field. It examines the relationship between nutrition and cancer with a multidisciplinary and multifactorial approach encompassing nutritional research, endocrinology, carcinogenesis, molecular biology and genetics.

The importance of environmental factors in the etiology of the major degener ative diseases, including cancers, is now generaIly accepted. Evidence obtained from studies with experimental animals and from human populations associates nutritional factors and dietary constituents with the causation of cancers at differ ent sites in the body. Estimates by epidemiologists based on comparisons of various population groups have indicated that as much as 50% of the cancer mortality may be influenced by diet. An important indicator is found in migrants to the United States or to other countries who develop the spectrum of cancers typical for the United States (or other countries) but different from that reported for their native country. About 20% of aIl deaths (450,000 per year) in the United States are caused by cancer. In addition, as the population grows the number of cancer cases steadily increases, but the age-adjusted total cancer incidence and mortality rates for sites other than the respiratory tract (cancers primarily attributable to cigarette smoking) have remained stable during the last 30 to 40 years. If one-half of these cancers are associated with dietary practices, an understanding of the process could save about 225,000 lives each year. The causes of cancer have been an important area of cancer research for many years. Certainly if one understands how the diet or the environment affects cancer, great insights might be gained into the mechanisms of cancer as weIl.

Overview of Nutritional Epidemiology; Foods and Nutrients; Nature of Variation in Diet; Short Term Dietary Recall and Recording Methods; Food Frequency Methods; Reproducibility and Validity of Food Questionnaries; Recall of Remote Diet; Surrogate Sources of Dietary Information; Anthropometric Measures and Body Composition; Implications of Total Energy Intake for Epidemiologic Analyses; Correction for the Effects of Measurement Error; Vitamin A and Lung Cancer; Dietary Fat and Breast Cancer; Diet and Coronary Heart Disease; Future Research Directions.

This book comprises proceedings from the Third International Conference on Advances in Nutrition and Cancer, held in Naples in May 2012. This highly multidisciplinary meeting analyzed “nutrition and cancer” from different perspectives and on the basis of distinct and up-to-date experimental approaches. Knowledge on the relation between lifestyle, diet, and cancer is explored in a number of contributions, and the role of dietary intervention in cancer patients is discussed. Issues of vital interest to the research community, such as epidemiological and experimental oncology (genetics, epigenetics, and the mechanisms of action of natural compounds in the diet), receive detailed consideration. A further key topic is the emerging molecular technologies (the “omics”) that can cast light on the interplay between nutrition and human malignancies. Chapters take the form of reviews that include sections presenting expert opinions.