Socio-economic and occupational risk factors for gastric cancer: a cohort study in Sweden

The effects of socio-economic/occupational factors on gastric cancer at various subsites (including corpus, cardia and unspecified cancers) are not well known. To investigate this issue, we carried out a follow-up study on the economically active Swedish population, based on the Swedish Family-Cancer Database. We calculated standardized incidence ratios and 95% confidence intervals for different occupational groups, adjusted for age, period, region and socio-economic status. The reference group was all the economically active population. Manual workers and farmers were at an increased risk of stomach cancer. An increased risk of corpus cancer was observed for male miners and quarry workers, fishermen, construction workers, packers, loaders and warehouse workers, clerical workers and female assistant nurses and postal workers. For cardia cancer, significantly increased standardized incidence ratios were observed for gardeners, transport workers, bricklayers and chemical process workers among men. Only male miner and quarry workers showed significantly increased risk of unspecified cancer. In conclusion, the present study indicates that socio-economic groups differ in risk by almost a factor of two for corpus and unspecified cancers, and less for cardia cancers. Cement and mineral dusts appear as major occupational risk factors.