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.