Vegetables, fruit and risk of non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis: a population-based prospective cohort study
Gut, 07/16/2012  Clinical Article

Oskarsson V et al. – Vegetable consumption, but not fruit consumption, may play a role in the prevention of non–gallstone–related acute pancreatitis.

• A population-based prospective cohort of 80019 women and men, aged 46-84 years, completed a food-frequency questionnaire at baseline and was followed up for incidence of non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2009.
• Participants were categorised into quintiles according to consumption of vegetables and consumption of fruit.
• Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate RRs and 95% CIs.

• In total, 320 incident cases (216 men and 104 women) with non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis were identified during 12 years of follow-up (891136 person-years).
• After adjustment for potential confounders, the authors observed a significant inverse linear dose-response association between vegetable consumption and risk of non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis; every two additional servings per day were associated with 17% risk reduction (RR=0.83; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.98; p=0.03).
• Among participants consuming >1 drink of alcohol per day and among those with body mass index ≥25 kg/m2, the RR for the highest compared with the lowest quintile of vegetable consumption was 0.29 (95% CI 0.13 to 0.67) and 0.49 (95% CI 0.29 to 0.85), respectively.
• Fruit consumption was not significantly associated with the risk of non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis; the RR comparing extreme quintiles of consumption was 1.20 (95% CI 0.81 to 1.78).