Cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and endometrial cancer risk: a population-based study in sweden

Objective: To assess effects of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption o n the risk of endometrial cancer among postmenopausal women. Methods: We performed a nationwide population-based case-control study amon g postmenopausal women aged 50-74 years in Sweden, including 709 incident e ndometrial cancer cases and 3368 controls. Results: Compared to never smokers, recent/current smokers had a decreased risk of endometrial cancer (multivariate OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.47-0.80), but fo rmer smokers presented no substantial difference in risk (multivariate OR 0 .90, 95% CI 0.72-1.14). We observed a decreased risk of endometrial cancer for postmenopausal smoking, but there was no clear impact on risk for preme nopausal smoking. The inverse association of smoking with risk was not expl ained by differences in body mass index between smokers and nonsmokers. Alc ohol consumption was not clearly associated with risk of endometrial cancer . The multivariate OR for women consuming up to 1.6 g of alcohol per day wa s 1.12 (95% CI 0.88-1.44), and 0.92 (95% CI 0.70-1.20) for women consuming more than 4 g per day (p for trend over categories=0.44). Conclusions: Current cigarette smoking reduces the risk of postmenopausal e ndometrial cancer, but the inverse association dissipates after smoking ces sation. Premenopausal smoking might not affect risk of postmenopausal endom etrial cancer. Alcohol consumption is not materially associated with risk.