Nutrition and lung cancer: a case control study in Iran

BACKGROUND: Despite many prospective and retrospective studies about the association of dietary habit and lung cancer, the topic still remains controversial. So, this study aims to investigate the association of lung cancer with dietary factors. METHOD: In this study 242 lung cancer patients and their 484 matched controls on age, sex, and place of residence were enrolled between October 2002 to 2005. Trained physicians interviewed all participants with standardized questionnaires. The middle and upper third consumer groups were compared to the lower third according to the distribution in controls unless the linear trend was significant across exposure groups. RESULT: Conditional logistic regression was used to evaluate the association with lung cancer. In a multivariate analysis fruit (P(trend) < 0.0001), vegetable (P = 0.001) and sunflower oil (P = 0.006) remained as protective factors and rice (P = 0.008), bread (P(trend) = 0.04), liver (P = 0.004), butter (P(trend) = 0.04), white cheese (P(trend) < 0.0001), beef (P(trend) = 0.005), vegetable ghee (P < 0.0001) and, animal ghee (P = 0.015) remained as risk factors of lung cancer. Generally, we found positive trend between consumption of beef (P = 0.002), bread (P < 0.0001), and dairy products (P < 0.0001) with lung cancer. In contrast, only fruits were inversely related to lung cancer (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: It seems that vegetables, fruits, and sunflower oil could be protective factors and bread, rice, beef, liver, dairy products, vegetable ghee, and animal ghee found to be possible risk factors for the development of lung cancer in Iran.