Citrus fruit linked with melanoma in preliminary study
But the study did not test whether citrus fruits were the cause of the skin cancers, and more work will be needed to confirm the connection, the authors write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The results, from a single “observational” study that may not reflect the whole U.S. population, should be interpreted with caution, said senior author Dr. Abrar Qureshi of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital.
The researchers used data on more than 63,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and 41,000 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, both of which ran from the mid-1980s to 2010. Every two to four years, researchers collected data on participants’ dietary patterns, and the men and women self-reported health events like melanoma diagnosis, which were confirmed with medical records.
The participants answered questions about how frequently they consumed grapefruit, oranges, grapefruit juice or orange juice, and the total of these four categories was considered an estimate of “overall citrus consumption,” although it does not include other citruses like lemons and limes.
Over more than 20 years of follow-up, the researchers noted 1,840 cases of melanoma. Compared to people who ate citrus less than twice a week, those who ate citrus two to four times per week had a 10 percent increased risk of melanoma.
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