Background:In vitro and animal data suggest that cadmium, a heavy metal that contaminates some foods and tobacco plants, is an estrogenic endocrine disruptor. Elevated estrogen exposure is associated with breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancer risk.
Objectives: We examined the association between dietary cadmium intake and risk of these cancers in the large, well-characterized Women’s Health Initiative (WHI).
Methods: A total of 155,069 postmenopausal women, 50–79 years of age, who were enrolled in the WHI clinical trials or observational study, participated in this study. We estimated dietary cadmium consumption by combining baseline food frequency questionnaire responses with U.S. Food and Drug Administration data on food cadmium content. Participants reported incident invasive breast, endometrial, or ovarian cancer, and WHI centrally adjudicated all cases through August 2009. We applied Cox regression to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs for each cancer, comparing quintiles of energy-adjusted dietary cadmium intake.
Results: Over an average of 10.5 years, 6,658 invasive breast cancers, 1,198 endometrial cancers, and 735 ovarian cancers were reported. We observed no statistically significant associations between dietary cadmium and risk of any of these cancers after adjustment for potential confounders including total dietary energy intake. Results did not differ in any subgroup of women examined.
Conclusions: We found little evidence that dietary cadmium is a risk factor for breast, endometrial, or ovarian cancers in postmenopausal women. Misclassification in dietary cadmium assessment may have attenuated observed associations.
1Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Program in Cancer Prevention, Public Health Sciences Division, Seattle, Washington, USA; 2Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health, Seattle, Washington, USA; 3Environmental Chemistry and Technology; and 4Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA; 5David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA; 6Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health, Bloomington, Indiana, USA; 7Department of Preventive Medicine, Program in Public Health, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stony Brook, New York, USA; 8Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Health Professions, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
Recommended Citation:
Scott V. Adams,1 Sabah M. Quraishi,1,et al. Dietary Cadmium Exposure and Risk of Breast, Endometrial, and Ovarian Cancer in the Women’s Health Initiative[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2014-01-01,Volume 122(Issue 6):594