Nutrient Dietary Patterns and Gastric Cancer Risk in Italy

Background: There have been several studies on diet and gastric cancer, but only a few investigations have considered the role of dietary patterns. Methods: We investigated gastric cancer risk in relation to dietary patterns in a case-control study conducted in northern Italy between 1997 and 2007, including 230 pa-tients with incident, histologically confirmed gastric cancer and 547 frequency-matched controls, admitted to the same hospitals as cases, with acute nonneoplastic conditions. Dietary habits were investigated through a validated food frequency questionnaire including 78 foods and beverages. We identified a posteriori dietary patterns on a selected set of 28 micro- and macro-nutri-ents through an exploratory principal component facto