Coffee and tea intake and risk of brain tumors in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort study.

BACKGROUND

In a recent US cohort study, total coffee and tea consumption was inversely associated with risk of glioma, and experimental studies showed that caffeine can slow the invasive growth of glioblastoma.

OBJECTIVE

The objective was to examine the relation between coffee and tea intake and the risk of glioma and meningioma in a large European cohort study, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC).

DESIGN

Data on coffee and tea intake were collected from men and women recruited into the EPIC cohort study. Over an average of 8.5 y of follow-up, 343 cases of glioma and 245 cases of meningioma were newly diagnosed in 9 countries. We used Cox proportional hazards models to examine the relation between coffee and tea and brain tumors.

RESULTS

We observed no associations between coffee, tea, or combined coffee and tea consumption and risk of either type of brain tumor when using quantiles based on country-specific distributions of intake. However, a significant inverse association was observed for glioma risk among those consuming ≥100 mL coffee and tea per day compared with those consuming <100 mL/d (hazard ratio: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.44, 0.97; P = 0.03). The association was slightly stronger in men (hazard ratio: 0.59; 95% CI: 0.34, 1.01) than in women (hazard ratio: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.42, 1.31), although neither was statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS

In this large cohort study, we observed an inverse association between total coffee and tea consumption and risk of glioma that was consistent with the findings of a recent study. These findings, if further replicated in other studies, may provide new avenues of research on gliomas.