ArticleCancers2022
Dietary Intakes of Animal and Plant Proteins and Risk of Colorectal Cancer: The EPIC-Italy Cohort.
Article in Cancers, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cancer Risk and Mortality Following Substitution of Animal Foods with Plant Foods: A Systematic Review.Current nutrition reports · 2025Pooled it
- The association between plant protein intake and cancer risk: a prospective cohort study.Nutrition journal · 2026Article
- Dietary Intake of Animal and Plant Proteins and Risk of Gastrointestinal Cancer Mortality: Results from the Golestan Cohort Study.The Journal of nutrition · 2025Article
- A recipe for a disaster: food, climate change, and cancer.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2025Review
- Partial substitution of red meat or processed meat with plant-based foods and the risk of colorectal cancer.European journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- High-protein diet scores, macronutrient substitution, and breast cancer risk: insights from substitution analysis.BMC women's health · 2024Article
- Dietary Heat-Treatment Contaminants Exposure and Cancer: A Case Study from Turkey.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We prospectively investigated the associations of protein intake with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk in middle-aged Italian men and women. Food consumption was assessed by validated Epic semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaires. Multivariable Cox models stratified by center, age, and sex, adjusted for confounders, estimated the associations of animal and plant protein consumption with CRC risk by subsite. Among 44,824 men and women, we identified 539 incident CRCs after a median follow-up of 14 years. Replacing animal proteins with plant proteins was associated with a decreased risk of rectal (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.55-0.92) but not colon cancer. By contrast, replacing animal proteins with plant proteins from high-glycemic-index (GI) foods was associated with an increased risk of proximal and distal (including sigma) colon cancer (HR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.07-1.40) but not when animal proteins were replaced with plant proteins from low-GI foods (HR, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.79-1.11). Further evaluation revealed that the increased colon cancer risk was limited to the substitution of proteins from red and processed meat, as well as dairy and eggs, with vegetable proteins from high-GI foods. Participants in the highest quintile of animal protein intake had higher plasma glucose and cholesterol levels than those in the lowest quintile. By contrast, higher intake of plant proteins from low-GI foods was inversely associated with fasting insulin and HOMA-IR levels. In conclusion, replacing animal proteins with plant proteins from high-GI foods was associated with an increased risk of colon cancer.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.