The Association between Dietary Fat Intake and Pancreatic Cancer Risk: A Large Prospective Study

Abstract

Background

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is classified as one of the most deadly cancers. Since the role of diet in modifying the effects of known risk factors of PC has been well established, exploring the dietary intakes in relation to the etiology of PC can be useful for elucidating the mechanisms of the disease progression.

Methods and Materials

This study was conducted within the Golestan prospective cohort study. The estimated intake of total fat and various dietary fat sources was calculated using a validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The relationship between these dietary intakes and risk of PC was examined using Cox Regression and hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI 95%) was reported.

Results

During 383,630 person-years follow-up and after excluding subjects with incomplete baseline information, a total of 48,676 adults were studied. Until October 30, 2014, 54 cases of PC were confirmed by medical professionals, based on the medical records and the exact cause of death using the criteria of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10 (ICD10). After adjusting for potential confounders we did not observe any statistically significant relationship between the intake of total fat and various dietary fat sources and risk of PC. There was only a significant positive association between the risk of PC and daily intake of butter, cream, and solid vegetable oil in the age-adjusted regression models (HR=2.10; 95% CI=1.04-4.21; P for trend=0.03). However, this relationship was not remained significant anymore in the fully adjusted models.

Conclusion

Based on the results of the current research, after taking into account all of the potential confounding factors, dietary intake of total fat as well as various dietary fat sources had no significant association with the risk of PC. However, it is likely that consuming substantially less saturated and trans fat sources such as dairy fats as well as solid vegetable oils may be beneficial to reduce the risk of this cancer.