Urinary Isothiocyanates Level and Liver Cancer Risk: A Nested Case-Control Study in Shanghai, China

Abstract

Experimental studies have provided evidence that isothiocyanates (ITCs) from cruciferous vegetables may modulate carcinogen metabolism and facilitate carcinogen detoxification and reduce cancer risk. However, no epidemiological studies on liver cancer were reported. This study investigates the association between urinary ITCs levels and liver cancer risk among men and women in Shanghai, China. A nested case-control study of 217 incident cases of liver cancer and 427 matched controls identified from the Shanghai Women's Health Study and Shanghai Men's Health Study was conducted. Conditional logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) summarizing the association between urinary ITCs levels and liver cancer risk. Compared to those with undetectable ITCs, nonsignificantly inverse association was observed among detectable (OR = 0.80; 95% CI = 0.51–1.26), below-median (OR = 0.76; 95% CI = 0.47–1.24), and above-median concentration (OR = 0.86; 95% CI = 0.52–1.41) with liver cancer risk. Similar patterns were observed when urinary ITCs levels were categorized into tertiles or quartiles. Although our study firstly focused on the association between urinary ITCs exposure and liver cancer risk, we did not find significant results. Future multicenter prospective, different population studies are warranted to validate our findings.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the participants and the staff from the Shanghai Women's and Men's Health Studies for their contribution to this research. Qi-Jun Wu and Jing Wang contributed equally to this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funds from the State Key Project Specialized for Infectious Diseases of China (Nos. 2008ZX10002-015 and 2012ZX10002008-002 to Yong-Bing Xiang), research funds of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Health (No. 2008208 to Jing Gao, 2008144 to Wei Zhang), as well as grants (R37 CA070867 to Wei Zheng, R01 CA82729 to XO Shu) from the U.S. National Institutes of Health for the parent studies.