Pancreatic Cancer

[Guest guest]

Hi folks:

The following looks pretty interesting to me. First because

pancreatic cancer is fairly common, and second because it has one of

the worst prognoses, I believe.

Also it is interesting because it lists the vegetables that were

found to be protective - onion, garlic, bean, carrot, corn, dark

leafy, citrus, sweet potato. It would be nice if we had the full

list of the fruits with protective qualities:

" Vegetable and fruit intake and pancreatic cancer in a population-

based case-control study in the San Francisco bay area.

Chan JM, Wang F, Holly EA.

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of

California San Francisco, 94118-1944, USA.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most devastating and rapidly fatal

cancers, yet little is known about the primary cause and prevention

of this disease. We conducted a population-based case-control study

to investigate the association between vegetables and fruits and

pancreatic cancer. Between 1995 and 1999, 532 cases and 1,701 age-

and sex-matched controls completed direct interviews using a

semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaire. No proxy interviews

were conducted. We observed inverse associations between consumption

of total and specific vegetables and fruits and the risk of

pancreatic cancer. The odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for the

highest versus the lowest quartile of total vegetable intake was 0.45

(0.32-0.62), trend P < 0.0001; and for total fruits and fruit juice

was 0.72 (0.54-0.98), trend P = 0.06. Odds ratios and 95% confidence

intervals for the highest versus the lowest quartile of specific

vegetables and fruits were: 0.63 (0.47-0.83) for dark leafy

vegetables, 0.76 (0.56-1.0) for cruciferous vegetables, 0.59 (0.43-

0.81) for yellow vegetables, 0.56 (0.41-0.76) for carrots, 0.51 (0.38-

0.70) for beans, 0.46 (0.33-0.63) for onions and garlic, and 0.78

(0.58-1.0) for citrus fruits and juice. Compared with less than five

servings per day of total vegetables and fruits combined, the risk of

pancreatic cancer was 0.49 (0.36-0.68) for more than nine servings

per day. These results suggest that increasing vegetable and fruit

consumption, already recommended for the prevention of several other

chronic diseases, may impart some protection against developing

pancreatic cancer. "

PMID: 16172215

Also of interst, PMID #s: 16215874, 15800266, 12936898

And a search of " Holly EA " produces lots of interesting stuff.

Including that, as usual, pancreatic cancer incidence is directly

related to BMI, and, perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not?),

inversely related to susceptibility to allergens.

Rodney.