Alcohol and tea consumption in relation to the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Guangdong, China.

To investigate whether alcohol and tea consumption has an etiological association with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in a high-incident population, a large scale case-control study was conducted. The study included 2846 individuals in Guangdong Province, China, with 1387 newly diagnosed cases of NPC and 1459 frequency-matched controls. Exposure histories of alcohol and tea consumption were obtained via personal interviews. Information regarding socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, dialect and household type), family history of NPC, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, dietary habits and other potential confounding factors was also studied. An analysis was performed using unconditional logistic regression to calculate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). The risk of NPC was found to be associated with habitual alcohol consumption and tea consumption. Tea consumption has been associated with a decreased occurrence of NPC (OR = 0.62), while consumption of alcohol was associated with a complex effect. Specifically, moderate consumption of alcohol was associated with decreased risk of NPC, while overuse, especially strong distillate spirits, appeared to be a risk factor.