Yoghurt Intake and Gastric Cancer: A Pooled Analysis of 16 Studies of the StoP Consortium

Background: Yoghurt can modify gastrointestinal disease risk, possibly acting on gut microbiota. Our study aimed at exploring the under-investigated association between yoghurt and gastric cancer (GC). Methods: We pooled data from 16 studies from the Stomach Cancer Pooling (StoP) Project. Total yoghurt intake was derived from food frequency questionnaires. We calculated study-specific odds ratios (ORs) of GC and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for increasing categories of yoghurt consumption using univariate and multivariable unconditional logistic regression models. A two-stage analysis, with a meta-analysis of the pooled adjusted data, was conducted. Results: The analysis included 6278 GC cases and 14,181 controls, including 1179 cardia and 3463 non-cardia, 1191 diffuse and 1717 intestinal cases. The overall meta-analysis revealed no association between increasing portions of yoghurt intake (continuous) and GC (OR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.94–1.02). When restricting to cohort studies, a borderline inverse relationship was found (OR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.88–0.99). The adjusted and unadjusted OR were 0.92 (95% CI = 0.85–0.99) and 0.78 (95% CI = 0.73–0.84) for any vs. no yoghurt consumption and GC risk. The OR for 1 category of increase in yoghurt intake was 0.96 (95% CI = 0.91–1.02) for cardia, 1.03 (95% CI = 1.00–1.07) for non-cardia, 1.12 (95% CI = 1.07–1.19) for diffuse and 1.02 (95% CI = 0.97–1.06) for intestinal GC. No effect was seen within hospital-based and population-based studies, nor in men or women. Conclusions: We found no association between yoghurt and GC in the main adjusted models, despite sensitivity analyses suggesting a protective effect. Additional studies should further address this association.
Fondazione AIRC per la ricerca sul cancro 21378
Unidade de Investigacao em Epidemiologia-Instituto de Saude Publica da Universidade do Porto (EPIUnit) UIDB/04750/2020
National funds from the Foundation for Science and Technology-FCT (Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education)
Project NEON-PC-Neuro-oncological complications of prostate cancer: longitudinal study of cognitive decline' - FEDER through the Operational Program Competitiveness and Internationalisation POCI-01-0145-FEDER-03235 PTDC/SAU-EPI/32358/2017
Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT)
EPIunit-Junior Research-Prog Financing UIDP/04750/2020
Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP) 2014/26897-0
European Cancer Prevention Organization
United States Department of Health & Human Services National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI)