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Coffee consumption and bladder cancer in nonsmokers: a pooled analysis of case–control studies in European countries

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Abstract

Background: Coffee consumption has been associated with an excess bladder cancer risk, but results from epidemiological studies are inconsistent. This association has been long debated, in part due to the potential confounding by smoking. We examined the risk associated with coffee consumption in nonsmokers in a pooled analysis of ten European bladder cancer case–control studies.

Methods: The pooled data set comprises 564 cases and 2929 hospital or population controls who had never smoked. They were enrolled in ten studies conducted in Denmark, Germany, Greece, France, Italy and Spain. Information on coffee consumption and occupation was re-coded following standard criteria. Unconditional logistic regression was applied adjusting for age, study center, occupation and gender.

Results: Seventy-nine percent of the study population reported having drunk coffee, and 2.4% were heavy drinkers, reporting having drunk on average ten or more cups per day. There was no excess risk in ever coffee drinkers (OR = 1.0, 95% CI 0.8–1.3) compared to never drinkers. The risk did not increase monotonically with dose but a statistically significant excess risk was seen for subjects having drunk ten or more cups per day (OR = 1.8, 95% CI 1.0–3.3). This excess was seen in both men and women. There was no evidence of an association of the risk with duration or type of coffee consumption. The pooled results were not dependent on the findings of any specific study, but they depended on the type of controls with an overall excess risk observed only for studies using hospital controls.

Conclusion: Nonsmokers who are heavy coffee drinkers may have a small excess risk of bladder cancer. Although these results cannot be attributed to confounding by smoking, the possibility of bias in control selection cannot be discarded. On the basis of these results, only a very small proportion of cancers of the bladder among nonsmokers could be attributed to coffee drinking.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Respiratory and Environmental Health Research Unit, Institut Municipal d'Investigació Mèdica (IMIM), 80 Doctor Aiguader Rd, Barcelona, 08003, Spain

    Maria Sala, Francisco Fernandez & Manolis Kogevinas

  2. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale-INSERM, Villejuif, France

    Sylvaine Cordier

  3. Abteilung Epidemiologie, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jenny Chang-Claude & Jürgen Wahrendorf

  4. Institute of Hygiene, University of Brescia, Italy

    Francesco Donato

  5. Servicio de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar, Cádiz, Spain

    Antonio Escolar-Pujolar

  6. Institute of Epidemiological and Clinical Research (IREC), Mataró (Barcelona), Spain

    Carlos Alberto González

  7. Bremen Institute for Prevention Research and Social Medicine, Bremen, Germany

    Eberhard Greiser & Hermann Pohlabeln

  8. Biometrie und Epidemiologie, Institut für Medizinische Informatik, Essen, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Jöckel

  9. University of Copenhagen, Denmark

    Elsebeth Lynge

  10. Unit of Environmental Cancer Epidemiology, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France

    Andrea`t Mannetje & Paolo Boffetta

  11. Institute of Occupational Health, University of Brescia, Italy

    Stefano Porru

  12. Centre d'Estudis Programes i Serveis Sanitaris, Institut Universitari Fundació Parc Taulí, Sabadell, Spain

    Consol Serra

  13. Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medical School, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Anastasia Tzonou

  14. Unit of Cancer Epidemiology, Turin, Italy

    Paolo Vineis

Authors
  1. Maria Sala
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  2. Sylvaine Cordier
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  3. Jenny Chang-Claude
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  4. Francesco Donato
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  5. Antonio Escolar-Pujolar
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  6. Francisco Fernandez
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  7. Carlos Alberto González
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  8. Eberhard Greiser
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  9. Karl-Heinz Jöckel
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  10. Elsebeth Lynge
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  11. Andrea`t Mannetje
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  12. Hermann Pohlabeln
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  13. Stefano Porru
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  14. Consol Serra
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  15. Anastasia Tzonou
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  16. Paolo Vineis
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  17. Jürgen Wahrendorf
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  18. Paolo Boffetta
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  19. Manolis Kogevinas
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Sala, M., Cordier, S., Chang-Claude, J. et al. Coffee consumption and bladder cancer in nonsmokers: a pooled analysis of case–control studies in European countries. Cancer Causes Control 11, 925–931 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026524014954

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026524014954

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