Kaaks R, Riboli E, Sinha R
Unit of Nutrition and Cancer, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
IARC Sci Publ. 1997(142):103-26.
The primary objective of nutritional epidemiology is to identify, in combination with other forms of research, which aspects of diet and nutritional factors are causally related to cancer development. However, traditional epidemiology can evaluate with only a limited degree of specificity to which individual dietary factors an increased occurrence of cancer can be attributed. The two main reasons for this are: (1) dietary intake levels of specific foods or food constituents can be strongly intercorrelated; (2) dietary intake levels of specific food constituents are generally measured with rather large errors. Biochemical markers are increasingly seen as measurements that may help to overcome some of the above-mentioned methodological problems in nutritional epidemiology.
营养流行病学的主要目标是与其他研究形式相结合，确定饮食和营养因素的哪些方面与癌症发展存在因果关系。然而，传统流行病学仅能在有限的特异性程度上评估癌症发生率增加可归因于哪些个体饮食因素。造成这种情况的两个主要原因是：（1）特定食物或食物成分的膳食摄入量水平可能高度相互关联；（2）特定食物成分的膳食摄入量水平通常测量误差较大。生化标志物越来越被视为可能有助于克服营养流行病学中上述一些方法学问题的测量手段。
