Browsing by Author "Willett, Walter C."

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Rice consumption and cancer incidence in US men and women
    (Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons), 2016-02-01) Zhang, Ran; Zhang, Xuehong; Wu, Kana; Wu, Hongyu; Sun, Qi; Hu, Frank B.; Han, Jiali; Willett, Walter C.; Giovannucci, Edward L.; Department of Dermatology, IU School of Medicine
    While both the 2012 and 2014 Consumer Reports concerned arsenic levels in US rice, no previous study has evaluated long-term consumption of total rice, white rice and brown rice in relation to risk of developing cancers. We investigated this in the female Nurses' Health Study (1984-2010), and Nurses' Health Study II (1989-2009), and the male Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2008), which included a total of 45,231 men and 160,408 women, free of cancer at baseline. Validated food frequency questionnaires were used to measure rice consumption at baseline and repeated almost every 4 years thereafter. We employed Cox proportional hazards regression model to estimate multivariable relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). During up to 26 years of follow-up, we documented 31,655 incident cancer cases (10,833 in men and 20,822 in women). Age-adjusted results were similar to multivariable-adjusted results. Compared to participants with less than one serving per week, the multivariable RRs of overall cancer for individuals who ate at least five servings per week were 0.97 for total rice (95% CI: 0.85-1.07), 0.87 for white rice (95% CI: 0.75-1.01), and 1.17 for brown rice (95% CI: 0.90-1.26). Similar non-significant associations were observed for specific sites of cancers including prostate, breast, colon and rectum, melanoma, bladder, kidney, and lung. Additionally, the null associations were observed among European Americans and non-smokers, and were not modified by BMI. Long-term consumption of total rice, white rice or brown rice was not associated with risk of developing cancer in US men and women.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Teenage acne and cancer risk in U.S. women: A prospective cohort study
    (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2015-05-15) Zhang, Mingfeng; Qureshi, Abrar A.; Fortner, Renée T.; Hankinson, Susan E.; Wei, Qingyi; Wang, Li-E; Eliassen, A. Heather; Willett, Walter C.; Hunter, David J.; Han, Jiali; Department of Epidemiology, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health
    BACKGROUND: Acne reflects hormone imbalance and is a key component of several systemic diseases. We hypothesized that diagnosis of acne as a teenager might predict subsequent risk of hormone-related cancers. METHODS: We followed 99,128 female nurses in the Nurses' Health Study II cohort for 20 years (1989-2009) and used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) of 8 specific cancers (breast, thyroid, colorectal, ovarian, cervical, and endometrial cancers, melanoma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma) for women with a history of severe teenage acne. RESULTS: After thoroughly adjusting for the previously known risk factors for each cancer, we found that among women with a history of severe teenage acne, the relative risk increased, with a multivariable-adjusted HR of 1.44 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03-2.01) for melanoma. We replicated this association in an independent melanoma case-control study of 930 cases and 1026 controls (multivariable-adjusted odds ratio, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.03-1.56). We also found that in both studies the individuals with teenage acne were more likely to have moles (52.7% vs 50.1%, P < .001 in the cohort study; and 55.2% vs 45.1%, P = .004 in the case-control study). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that a history of teenage acne might be a novel risk factor for melanoma independent from the known factors, which supports a need for continued investigation of these relationships.