• Department of Nutrition, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
• Department of Communicable Diseases Control and Prevention, Hangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies provide limited information on the relationship between dairy consumption and the incidence of esophagus cancer (EC). We examined whether eating dairy foods is associated with a lower risk of EC in an American population.

METHODS: In our study, we analyzed data from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) cancer screening trial, which included 101,723 subjects. Dairy product consumption was assessed using a dietary history questionnaire. We used Cox regression and restricted cubic splines to assess whether dairy consumption is associated with EC incidence.

RESULTS: A total of 154 EC cases were identified after a median follow-up of 12.2 years. After adjusting for confounders, we discovered no statistically significant correlation between total dairy product consumption and EC risk (HR with 95% CI for ≥1.79 servings/day vs. ≤0.6 servings/day: 0.83, 0.50-1.38; p for trend = 0.465). Additionally, no associations were found between EC risk and other dairy foods such as milk, yogurt, and cheese.

CONCLUSION: We concluded that the findings of the PLCO cohort do not suggest dairy consumption reduces the risk of EC.