Meat intake and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Abstract

We conducted a population-based, case-control study to test the hypothesis that consumption of meat and meat-related mutagens increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and whether the associations are modified by N-acetyltransferase (NAT) 1 and 2. Participants (336 cases and 460 controls) completed a 117-item food frequency questionnaire. The risk of NHL was associated with a higher intake of red meat (OR=1.5; CI, 1.1-2.2), total fat (OR=1.4; CI, 1.0-2.1), and oleic acid (OR=1.5; CI, 1.0-2.2). NHL risk was also associated with a higher intake of very well-done pork (OR=2.5; 95% CI, 1.4-4.3) and the meat-related mutagen MeIQx (OR=1.6; 95% CI, 1.1-2.3). Analyses of the major NHL histologic subtypes showed a positive association between diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and higher intake of red meat (OR=2.1; 95% CI, 1.1-3.9) and the association was largely due to meat-related mutagens as a positive association was observed for higher intakes of both MeIQx (OR=2.4; 95% CI, 1.2-4.6) and DiMeIQx (OR=1.9; 95% CI, 1.0-3.5). Although the OR for follicular lymphoma (FL) was also increased with a higher red meat intake (OR=1.9; 95% CI, 1.1-3.3), the association appeared to be due to increased oleic acid (OR=1.7; 95% CI: 0.9-3.1). We found no evidence that polymorphisms in NAT1 or NAT2 modify the association between NHL and meat-related mutagens. Our results provide further evidence that red meat consumption is associated with an increase in NHL risk, and new evidence that the specific components of meat, namely fat and meat-related mutagens, may be impacting NHL subtype risk differently.