Coffee and Tea Consumption and the Risk of Lung Cancer in a Population of Postmenopausal Women

• Main Author: Santos, Abigail
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2014
• Subjects: lung cancer; women; Women's Health
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/42; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=masters_theses_2

Lung cancer has been the leading cause of cancer death in women forthe past three decades. Although smoking is the most important riskfactor for lung cancer, not all lung cancer deaths in American womenare attributed to smoking and the role of dietary exposures remainunclear.In particular, the effect of coffee consumption and teaconsumption on lung cancer risk remains inconclusive. Therefore weassessed these associations prospectively in 83,777 women between theages of 50-79 who did not have a previous history of cancer. Dailycoffee and tea consumption (cups/d) were assessed via a baselinequestionnaire while the 1,038 lung cancer cases included in analysiswere self-reported and verified by outcome assessors. Cox proportionalhazard models, adjusted for important lung cancer risk factors, wereused to model the associations. 71% of women reported drinking coffeedaily while only 26% of participants drank tea. Preliminary resultssuggested a significant increase in lung cancer risk for caffeinated(HR=1.47, 95% CI 1.21-1.79), decaffeinated (HR=1.56, 95% CI 1.17-2.07)and total coffee (HR= 1.58, 95% CI 1.29-1.93) when comparing those inthe highest consumption categories to non-drinkers, but no significantresults were observed in these consumption groups in an analysisconducted with only non-smokers. Daily tea consumption wassignificantly associated with a reduction of risk (HR= 0.82, 95% CI0.71-0.96). Our data suggests that there is no association betweencoffee consumption and lung cancer risk or tea consumption and lungcancer risk.