This application is to establish a cohort of adult men in Shanghai for a long-term epidemiological study of cancer and other chronic diseases, with a focus on identifying modifiable protective dietary factors for cancers. This study will be built upon our recent success in the Shanghai Women's Health Study (SWHS) (R01CA70867), a prospective cohort study of 75,000 women.
The specific aims of this study are: 1) to conduct in-person interviews and follow-up for cancer incidence and total mortality of 73,000 men who live in the seven SWHS communities and are primarily between age 40 to 70 years (67,005 of them are husbands of the SWHS participants); and 2) to collect and store baseline blood and urine samples from a subset of cohort members (N=30,000) and post-diagnostic blood samples from all men diagnosed with cancer (N=2270) during the follow-up period. This cohort study will enable us, in the first 5-year funding period to test a spectrum of etiologic hypotheses for major cancers. Specifically, we will focus on the examination of the potential cancer-inhibitory effects of the following foods (their major phytochemical constituents): tea (polyphenols), soy foods (isoflavones), allium vegetables (organosulfur compounds), crucifers (isothiocyanates, dithiolthiones, indoles), and dark green-leafy vegetables (lutein and others) and to explore the relation of cancer with specific oriental foods, such as bok choy, Chinese cabbage, white radish, ginger root, and ginseng. This proposed study will be highly cost-efficient since most of subjects have already been recruited into the study, as part of the SWHS. The procedures for follow-up and dietary assessment have been developed, and feasibility of the study has been clearly demonstrated. While hundreds of cancer epidemiological studies have been conducted, few have, as a primary goal, focused on identifying dietary protective factors. Men in Shanghai differ substantially from those in the U.S. in dietary and other exposure patterns, including high intake of tea, soy foods, and many other vegetables. Given such exposure patterns, this Proposed study will provide unique, unparalleled opportunities to examine many important etiologic hypotheses that cannot be addressed adequately among men in the U.S. and other Western countries. The stored blood and urine samples will be valuable for future studies of biologic variables and their interactions with environmental factors in the etiology of cancers, particularly for testing novel hypotheses when new knowledge and laboratory technology become available.
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