@article{3054547,
    title = "Smoking and alcohol in the etiology of oral cancer: gender-specific risk
profiles in the south of Greece",
    author = "Zavras, AI and Douglass, CW and Joshipura, K and Wu, T and Laskaris, G and and Petridou, E and Dokianakis, G and Segas, J and Lefantzis, D and and Nomikos, P and Wang, YF and Diehl, SR",
    journal = "Oral Oncology",
    year = "2001",
    volume = "37",
    number = "1",
    pages = "28-35",
    publisher = "ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV",
    issn = "1368-8375",
    doi = "10.1016/S1368-8375(00)00060-9",
    keywords = "mouth neoplasms; pharyngeal neoplasms; tobacco; smoking; alcohol; risk
factors; women’s health; Greece",
    abstract = "Oral and pharyngeal cancer (OC) mortality is very low in Greece,
especially among men, compared to other European countries. We conducted
a case-control study of OC in Athens, and obtained information on
tobacco, alcohol use and other potential risk factors and confounding
variables for 110 incident cases and 115 hospital-based controls. We
used multivariate logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and
95% confidence intervals (CIs). Tobacco smoking (packyears, P-trend =
0.01) and alcohol use (drinks/week, P-trend = 0.07) were independent
risk factors, with a multiplicative effect for combined exposures (OR,
8.3; 95% CI, 2.4 - 29.1. for > 28 alcohol drinks/week and > 50
packyears of cigarette smoking). The type of alcoholic beverage also
seemed important: drinking ouzo and tsipouro (liquors of high ethanol
concentration) was associated with greater increased OC risk than
drinking comparable amounts of wine, beer or dark spirits. While alcohol
drinking is more common for male cases Versus controls, few men reported
regularly consuming large quantities of ethanol associated with highest
risk of OC in other studies. This may partially explain the low rates of
male OC mortality in Greece. Among the 38% of our cases who were women,
however, neither smoking nor alcohol drinking frequencies were
significantly elevated compared to controls, and so the etiology of OC
risk in females requires further investigation, (C) Published by
Elsevier Science Ltd."
}