Rectal Mucosal Proliferation, Dietary Factors, and the Risk of

Colorectal cancer arises from a series of precursor stages, the so called adenoma-carcinoma sequence. Increased rectal mucosal proliferation may be an early step in this sequence. Because dietary factors are implicated in the etiology of colorectal cancer, one might predict that diet would also be associated with proliferation. We conducted this study to examine the association of diet with rectal mucosal proliferation. Rectal mucosal proliferation was measured in endoscopic biopsy specimens by proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunohistochemistry and whole crypt mitotic counts (WCMCs). Diet was evaluated using a validated quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The correlation between PCNA labeling index (LI) an