Jane G. Pouzou, MPH, PhD: Johnson & Johnson: Stock Shareholder (excluding mutual funds) (Ongoing) MatPrat Norway: Grant/Research Support (Ongoing) Medtronic: Stock Shareholder (excluding mutual funds) (Ongoing) National Cattlemens Beef Association: Grant/Research Support (Ongoing)
Objectives: To assess a dose-response (DR) association between colorectal cancer (CRC) and lower consumption levels of fresh red meat (FM) and processed red meat (PM), compared with findings from all consumption levels.
Methods: We extracted cohort studies cited by Global Burden of Disease 2019 (GBD) associating meat consumption and CRC. We identified study arms with “low consumption” (LC) as those below NHANES’ median consumption of FM ( < 56 g/day) and PM ( < 20 g/day).
Results: Thirty cohorts from 14 countries contributed 22,402,195 person-years (PY) and 23,721 CRC cases. Eight cohorts (4,871,778 PY; 5,703 CRC cases) assessed only PM, one cohort (5,422 PY; 102 CRC cases) only FM. Weighted mean daily intake for PM/RM was 9.6/30g and 23/44g for LC and AC, respectively. In our MA, we found no significant association for RM and CRC at low consumption, whether using LC (RR 50g/day = 0.93 (0.854-1.020)) or AC evidence (1.04 (0.985-1.119)). We found no association between PM and CRC in LC arms (RR 20g/day = 1.01 (0.868-1.184)). Using AC resulted in a significant association with CRC with PM consumption ≥19g/day (1.07 (1.018-1.122)). In contrast, the GBD reported significant association with RM at 50 g/day (1.08 (1.02-1.16)) and with PM at 20g/day (1.06 (1.02-1.1)).
Conclusions: We found no empirical association between low consumption of RM or PM, and CRC. This finding was consistent for all consumption levels of RM. Use of all PM consumption levels overestimated the association at ≥19 g/day consumption. A monotonic DR relationship between RM/PM and CRC is not empirically warranted.
Funding Sources: Work partially funded by MatPrat Norway. Funders had no input on the analysis or abstract preparation.
