Education, economic status and other risk factors in gastric cancer: “a case–control study of Turkish oncology group”

Diet and lifestyle related to socioeconomic status emerged as risk factors for gastric cancer in several studies. However, the results were not always consistent with the socioeconomic status. The aim of this study was to evaluate the risk factors independent from education as a measure of socioeconomic status . Two hundred and fifty-three patients with gastric cancer diagnosed in 2005 and equal number of control subjects were interviewed for several characteristics and diet. Matching was done for age, gender, city of residence and also for the level of education. Despite these matching preferences, patients had significantly lower income when compared to the control subjects ( P = 0.0001). Higher rate of patients were smoking more than 2 packs/day of cigarettes ( P = 0.018). Also significantly higher rate of control subjects were using antibiotics ( P = 0.002). Coffee ( P