EPIC-Europe is a collaboration between 23 centres in 10 European countries. The centres involved and the numbers of participants in each country are shown in this map and this table.
EPIC-Europe is conducting a large number of analyses on the associations of diet with subsequent cancer risk, with a focus on the most common cancers such as cancers of the stomach, colorectum (large bowel), breast, prostate and lung. Details are given in the EPIC-Europe web site.
Several important papers from EPIC-Europe on the association between diet and other lifestyle factors with cancer risk have now been published. These results have shown that a high meat intake is associated with an increased risk of stomach cancer (Gonzalez et al, 2006) and that a high intake of several carotenoids and tocopherols are associated with a reduced risk (Jenab et al, 2006); intake of fruit and vegetables is not associated with risk of stomach cancer (Gonzalez et al, 2006). A high intake of fruit and vegetables do not appear to be associated with risk of cancer of the prostate (Key et al, 2004), kidney (Weikert et al, 2006) or ovary (Schulz et al, 2005), although a high fruit intake has been associated with a reduced risk of cancer of the lung (Miller et al, 2004) and upper aero-digestive tract (Boeing et al, 2006). For breast cancer, so far published analyses of dietary factors have shown no strong associations for fish intake (Engeset et al, 2006) or fruit and vegetables (van Gils et al, 2005). However, obesity (Lahmann et al, 2004) and adult weight gain is associated with an increased breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women, especially in women not taking hormone-replacement therapy (Lahmann et all, 2005 ). This is most likely due to an increase in blood concentrations of sex hormones (Rinaldi et al, 2006) which increases the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal (Kaaks et al, 2005) and premenopausal women (Kaaks et al, 2005). Other related factors, such as circulating insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), have also been found to be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women (Rinaldi et al, 2006).
A range of papers describing the characteristics of EPIC-Europe participants, dietary methods used, and the range of diversity of diets in Europe is available in a supplement to the journal Public Health Nutrition, vol 5. No 6(B). Dec 2002.
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