Fruit and vegetable intake and gastric cancer risk in a large United States prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: Fruit and vegetable intake may protect against gastric cancer incidence. Results from case-control studies have indicated an inverse association, but results from cohort studies are inconsistent. METHODS: We prospectively investigated the association in 490,802 participants of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for gastric cancer risk factors. We present hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) per increase of one daily serving per 1,000 calories. RESULTS: During 2,193,751 person years, 394 participants were diagnosed with incident gastric cancer. We observed no significant associations between total fruit and vegetable intake (1.01, 0.95-1.08), fruit intake (1.04, 0.95-1.14), or vegetable intake (0.98, 0.88-1.08) and gastric cancer risk. Results did not vary by sex or anatomic subsite (cardia versus non-cardia). All 13 botanical subgroups examined had no significant associations with either anatomic sub-site. CONCLUSION: We did not observe significant associations between overall fruit and vegetable intake and gastric cancer risk in this large prospective cohort study.