Results
Over a mean follow-up of 13.9 years (855,585 person-years) of 61,433 women, 733 incident cases of colorectal cancer were diagnosed. Of these cancers, 234 were located in the proximal colon, 155 in the distal colon and 230 in the rectum; 4 cases were diagnosed with both colon and rectal cancer and information on subsite was not available for 110 cases. The mean age (±SD) at diagnosis of colorectal cancer was 68.3 years (±9.0 years). At baseline, the median consumption of red meat in the cohort was 70 g/day, and the median values in the lower and upper quartiles were 37 g/day and 114 g/day, respectively (Table I). Women with higher red meat consumption were younger and tended to have a slightly higher BMI than women with lower consumption. Intakes of total energy, alcohol, saturated fat, vegetables, whole-grain foods, fish and poultry increased, whereas calcium intake decreased across quartiles of red meat consumption. To account for these differences, we controlled for the corresponding variables in multivariate analyses.
Table I. Age-Standardized Baseline Characteristics of 61,433 Women According to Red Meat Consumption