Coffee and alcohol consumption and bladder cancer

Abstract

Epidemiological studies on coffee, alcohol and bladder cancer risk published up to 2007 were reviewed. Coffee drinkers have a moderately higher relative risk of bladder cancer compared to non-drinkers. The association may partly be due to residual confounding by smoking or dietary factors, but the interpretation remains open to discussion, although the absence of dose and duration–risk relations weighs against the presence of a causal association. Most studies of alcohol and bladder cancer found no association, with some studies finding a direct and other an inverse one. This again may be due to differential confounding effect of tobacco smoking – the major risk factor for bladder cancer – in various populations. Thus, epidemiological findings on the relation between alcohol drinking and bladder cancer exclude any meaningful association.

• Alcohol drinking
• coffee
• epidemiology
• review
• risk factors
• urinary bladder neoplasms