Background: The associations between red and processed meat consumption and esophageal cancer risk remain inconclusive. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to analyze these associations.
Methods: We searched PubMed and EMBASE to identify studies published between the databases' dates of inception and May 2019.
Results: We ultimately selected 33 eligible studies for analysis. We found that the summary relative risks for the associations between meat consumption and esophageal cancer risk were positive for the case-control studies (P < 0.05), but negative for the cohort studies included in the analysis (P > 0.05). Subtype analysis indicated that red and processed meat consumption was not associated with the risks of esophageal adenocarcinoma (P > 0.05) and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (P > 0.05) in the cohort studies.
Conclusions: We found case-control but not cohort studies to associate consumption of red and processed meat with the risk of esophageal cancer. Further large prospective studies are needed to validate these findings.
Keywords: Esophageal cancer; Meat; Meta-analysis.