Risk factors of esophageal and stomach cancer and their clustering in Dafeng municipality: a case-control study

Objective To analyze risk factors of esophageal and gastric cancer and the clustering of these factors in Dafeng municipality of Jiangsu province and to provide references for prevention and control of esophageal and gastric cancer.Methods A case-control study was conducted among 526 and 504 first-diagnosed esophageal and stomach cancer patients registered in population-based cancer registry and 607 and 629 age-,gender-matched healthy controls randomly selected from permanent local residents during October 2002 to November 2010;all participants were interviewed face-to-face with a self-designed questionnaire.Results Unconditional logistic regression analysis showed that irregular eating,eating fast,preference for hot and salty food,cigarette smoking,and alcohol drinking were risk factors for esophageal cancer and eating fast,preference for hot and salty food,not eating garlic,and cigarette smoking were risk factors for stomach cancer after adjusting for gender,age,education level,marriage and annual household income ten-year ago.There were significant differences between the cases and the controls in the proportions of having 3 risk factors (32.5% vs.26.2%) and ≥4 risk factors (17.9% vs.7.0%) for esophageal cancer and having 3 risk factors (41.1% vs.35.3%) and ≥4 risk factors (19.0% vs.7.1%) for gastric cancer,respectively (P<0.001 for all);the results of unconditional logistic regression analysis also showed that after adjusting confounding factors,the participants with 3 and ≥4 risk factors of esophageal or gastric cancer had significantly increased risk of esophageal cancer (odds ratioOR=2.58,95% confidence interval95%CI=1.80-3.69 and OR=5.34,95%CI=3.34-8.55) or gastric caner (OR=2.14,95%CI=1.44-3.18 and OR=5.05,95%CI=3.05-8.36) compared to those with ≤1 relevant risk factors.Conclusion Eating fast,preference for hot eating and cigarette smoking are common risk factors for esophageal and stomach cancer and the cancer risk increases with the increment of the number of risk factors in the population of Dafeng municipality.