Childhood and Adulthood Risk Factors of Gastric Cancer: A Hospital-Based Case-Control Study in Iran

Background: gastric cancer (gc) is the most common cancer among iranian men. this study aimed to investigate the association between early and late lifestyle risk factors and gc among the iranian population. method: a hospital-based case-control study recruited gc patients from the cancer institute in 2010-2012. controls were healthy visitors to be frequency-matched based on sex, age, and residential place, and were recruited from the non-oncology wards. we collected exposure to various established risk factors before the diagnosis in patients and prior to the interview in controls. additionally, we obtained information on socioeconomic factors during childhood. logistic regression models were employed to estimate the odds ratios (ors) and 95% confidence intervals (cis) for various potential risk factors. results: the study included a total of 210 gc patients and 210 controls. the average age of cases was 59.9 years, and controls were 56.7 years. participants with a family history of gc had a 4-fold higher risk of gc than those without a family history (or=4.1, 95% ci: 1.7, 9.6). we observed an inverse association between gc with education (p-value for trend =0.003). individuals reported coffee consumption had a lower risk of gc (or=0.5, 95% ci: 0.3, 0.8) as compared to non-coffee users. the study found that individuals with high intake of fruit (or=0.6, 95% ci: 0.3, 1.3) and medium (or=0.5, 95% ci: 0.3, 1.0) and high (or=0.3, 95% ci: 0.1, 0.6) intake of vegetables had lower odds of gc, while higher consumption of red meat (or=5.3, 95% ci: 2.8, 10.2) had higher odds of gc. analysis of factors related to the childhood period showed that lack of access to tap water increased odds of gc compared to access to tap water (or: 2.9, 95% ci: 1.3, 6.7). we did not observe any significant associations between h. pylori infection, opium use, waterpipe smoking, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, bmi, and other early life risk factors, and the risk of gc. conclusion: the occurrence of gc is influenced by several factors, including family history of gc, dietary habits, and socioeconomic status (ses) during both childhood and adulthood.