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Review

Nature Reviews Cancer 4, 206–215 (1 March 2004) | doi:10.1038/nrc1298

Diet and cancer |[mdash]| the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition

Sheila Bingham & Elio Riboli

Diet is thought to be one of the most important contributing factors to cancer risk. The contribution of diet to cancer is linked to genetic factors, and uncovering the details of this linkage requires that very large studies be carried out over long time periods, with a detailed analysis of food intake. For this reason, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition — a study of over 500,000 people in 10 European countries — was devised, to investigate the relationship between diet, metabolic and genetic factors, and cancer. How will this study be run, and will it be able to avoid some of the problems of measurement error that were previously encountered with other dietary studies?