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Vegetable and fruit intake and the risk of bladder cancer: Japan Public Health Center-based prospective study

British Journal of Cancer volume 126, pages 1647–1658 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background

Vegetable and fruit consumption may have a protective effect against several types of cancer. However, evidence suggesting that increased intake of vegetables and fruits, their subtypes, or the antioxidant nutrients they contain in abundance decreases the risk of bladder cancer is limited.

Methods

This study included 80,952 participants from the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study, who responded to a food frequency questionnaire in a 5-year follow-up survey in 1995–1998 and were followed up until December 2015 to investigate the associations between intake of vegetables and fruits, their subtypes, or the antioxidant nutrients and bladder cancer risk using Cox proportional hazards regression models.

Results

Within 1,287,514 person-years of follow-up, 401 bladder cancer cases (307 men and 94 women) were diagnosed. No association was found between intake of total vegetable and fruit, total vegetable, total fruit, subtypes of vegetables and fruits, or antioxidant nutrients and bladder cancer risk in both men and women, even in the analyses conducted among men stratified by smoking status.

Conclusions

In this population, the consumption of vegetables and fruits was not associated with the risk of bladder cancer.

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Data availability

For information on how to submit an application for gaining access to JPHC data and/or biospecimens, please follow the instructions at https://epi.ncc.go.jp/en/jphc/805/8155.html.

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Acknowledgements

The members of the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study are listed at the following site (as of April 2020): https://epi.ncc.go.jp/en/jphc/781/8510.html. We would like to thank the Akita, Iwate, Nagano and Okinawa Cancer Registries for providing their incidence data.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Cancer Center Research and Development Fund (since 2010), a Grant-in-Aid for Cancer Research from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan (from 1989 to 2010) and MAFF Commissioned project study (JPJ009842).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan

    Nobuhiro Narii, Tomotaka Sobue, Ling Zha & Tetsuhisa Kitamura

  2. Epidemiology and Prevention Group, Center for Public Health Sciences, National Cancer Center, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0045, Japan

    Norie Sawada, Motoki Iwasaki, Manami Inoue, Taiki Yamaji & Shoichiro Tsugane

Authors
  1. Nobuhiro Narii
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  2. Tomotaka Sobue
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  3. Ling Zha
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  4. Tetsuhisa Kitamura
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  5. Norie Sawada
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  6. Motoki Iwasaki
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  9. Shoichiro Tsugane
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Contributions

NN, TS and LZ designed the work that led to the submission. NS and TS acquired the data. All authors participated in the interpretation of data. NN carried out the statistical analyses and drafted the manuscript. TS, LZ, TK, NS, M Iwasaki, M Inoue, TY and ST critically revised the manuscript. ST is the principal investigator of the JPHC Study. All authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tomotaka Sobue.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was conducted in compliance with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of the National Cancer Center, Tokyo, Japan and by the Ethical Review Board of Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. The participants were informed of the study objectives, and those who completed the survey questionnaire were regarded as consenting to participation.

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Narii, N., Sobue, T., Zha, L. et al. Vegetable and fruit intake and the risk of bladder cancer: Japan Public Health Center-based prospective study. Br J Cancer 126, 1647–1658 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-022-01739-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-022-01739-0

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