The intake of citrus fruit inhibits the development of gastric cancer. - GreenMedInfo Summary

Purpose: Under the situation that antioxidant supplementary has no anticancer effect, updating meta-analysis to evaluate association between intake of citrus fruit and gastric cancer risk.

Methods: The list of articles to be searched was established using citation discovery tools provided by PubMed and Scopus. The effect size of each article to be used in meta-analysis was calculated using interval-collapse method. Summary effect size (sES) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were obtained by conducting meta-analysis. Random effect dose-response meta-regression (DRMR) was performed to investigate the dose-response relationship.

Results: A total of 5 cohort studies were selected. The result was 13% reduction of gastric cancer according to the intake of citrus fruit (sES=0.87, 95% CI: 0.76-0.99, I-squared = 69.6%). In sub-group analysis, it was found that the intake of citrus fruit inhibited cardia gastric cancer (CGC) (sES= 0.67, 95% CI: 0.55-0.81, I-squared=46.1%) and as a result of DRMR, 100 gram citrus fruit intake per day inhibits CGC by 40% (RR=0.60, 95% CI: 0.44-0.83).

Conclusions: It is suggested that the intake of citrus fruit inhibits the development of CGC. This conclusion can be used as a primary prevention measures in the future under the situation that the incidence of CGC tends to increase currently.