Fat food habitual intake and risk of oral cancer.

This case-control study evaluated fat food habitual intake in the context of the Brazilian diet as a risk factor for oral cancer. A food frequency questionnaire was applied to 70 patients with oral carcinoma and an equal number of controls treated in the same hospital for acute non-neoplastic conditions. Participants were paired for age, gender and smoking status, and matched by frequency for the use of dental prostheses and length of smoking history. Conditional logistic regression for multivariate analysis indicated as risk factors the habitual intake of foods rich in animal and saturated fat: pork meat, soup, cheese, bacon and fried food. The multivariate model also indicated the protective effect of non-cooked butter or margarine, probably the most effective vehicle for vitamin A ingestion in the Brazilian diet. These findings suggest that there is a non-negligible scope for the prevention of oral cancer through the improvement of diet.