Purpose: Hardly anything is known about the aetiology of thymoma. This paper presents data regarding tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption in relation to thymoma from the first case-control study performed on this rare tumour.
Methods: A European multi-centre case-control study including incident cases aged 35-69 years with thymoma between 1995 and 1997, was conducted in seven countries. A set of controls, used in seven parallel case-control studies by the same research group was used, including population-based controls from five countries and hospital controls with colon cancer from two countries. Altogether 103 cases, accepted by a reference pathologist, 712 colon cancer controls, and 2071 population controls were interviewed.
Results: Tobacco smoking was moderately related with thymoma (OR 1.4, 95% CI 0.9-2.2), and a tendency to dose-response was shown (p = 0.04), with an increased risk for heavy smokers defined as ≥41 pack-years (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.1-3.9). A high consumption of spirits defined as ≥25 g of alcohol per day was associated with an increased risk of thymoma (OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.1-5.4), whereas no association was found with beer or wine.
Conclusions: Tobacco smoking and a high intake of spirits were indicated as risk factors for thymoma.
Keywords: Alcohol; Case-control study; Risk factors; Thymoma; Thymus cancer; Tobacco smoking.
Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Ltd.