Design and Serendipity in Establishing a Large Cohort with Wide Dietary Intake Distributions

Abstract

In 1995-1996, the authors mailed a food frequency questionnaire to 3.5 million American Association of Retired Persons members who were aged 50-69 years and who resided in one of six states or two metropolitan areas with high-quality cancer registries. In establishing a cohort of 567,169 persons (340,148 men and 227,021 women), the authors were fortunate in that a less-than-anticipated baseline response rate (threatening inadequate numbers of respondents in the intake extremes) was offset by both a shifting and a widening of the intake distributions among those who provided satisfactory data. Reported median intakes for the first and fifth intake quintiles, respectively, were 20.4 and 40.1 (men) and 20.1 and 40.0 (women) percent calories from fat, 10.3 and 32.0 (men) and 8.7 and 28.7 (women) g per day of dietary fiber, 3.1 and 11.6 (men) and 2.8 and 11.3 (women) servings per day of fruits and vegetables, and 20.7 and 156.8 (men) and 10.5 and 97.0 (women) g per day of red meat. After 5 years of follow-up, the cohort is expected to yield nearly 4,000 breast cancers, more than 10,000 prostate cancers, more than 4,000 colorectal cancers, and more than 900 pancreatic cancers. The large size and wide intake range of the cohort will provide ample power for examining a number of important diet and cancer hypotheses.

Clustering in General Measurement Error Models

“…We first consider clustering of usual dietary intakes using the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study (NIH-AARP) (Reedy et al, 2008;Schatzkin et al, 2001). …”

Recent Studies on Nutrition and Parkinson’s Disease Prevention: A Systematic Review

“…Liu et al [18] used data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study which was established in 1995-1996 by the National Cancer Institute to investigate the roles of diet and lifestyle in cancer etiology [19]. This cohort was comprised of 566,401 AARP members aged 50 to 71 years from six US states and two metropolitan areas who answered a baseline survey on diet and lifestyle.…”

A functional method for the conditional logistic regression with errors-in-covariates

“…In order to illustrate the proposed methodology, we construct a matched case-control data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health cohort (Schatzkin et al 2001) using the age at entry into the study and age at menopause as the matching variables, and study the association between breast cancer and non-alcohol energy from total fat. The nutrient intakes are measured via food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and they involve substantial amount of errors.…”