A data mining approach to investigate food groups related to incidence of bladder cancer in the BLadder cancer Epidemiology and Nutritional Determinants International Study

• Published in: British Journal of Nutrition Vol. 124; no. 6; pp. 611 - 619
• Main Authors: Yu, Evan Y. W., Wesselius, Anke, Sinhart, Christoph, Wolk, Alicja, Stern, Mariana Carla, Jiang, Xuejuan, Tang, Li, Marshall, James, Kellen, Eliane, van den Brandt, Piet, Lu, Chih-Ming, Pohlabeln, Hermann, Steineck, Gunnar, Allam, Mohamed Farouk, Karagas, Margaret R., La Vecchia, Carlo, Porru, Stefano, Carta, Angela, Golka, Klaus, Johnson, Kenneth C., Benhamou, Simone, Zhang, Zuo-Feng, Bosetti, Cristina, Taylor, Jack A., Weiderpass, Elisabete, Grant, Eric J., White, Emily, Polesel, Jerry, Zeegers, Maurice P. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 28.09.2020; Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Subjects: 3.3 Nutrition and chemoprevention; Accuracy; Age; Algorithms; and promotion of well-being; Animal Production; Beverages; Bladder; Bladder cancer; Bladder cancer; Data mining; Epidemiological studies; Food groups; Building codes; Cancer; Cardiovascular; Case-Control Studies; Classification; Concrete structures; CONSUMPTION; Data Mining; Datasets; Decision trees; Diet; DIETARY PATTERNS; Dietary Surveys and Nutritional Epidemiology; Epidemiological studies; Epidemiology; Fats; Female; FLUID INTAKE; Food; Food groups; Food intake; Food Sciences; FRUIT; Grain; Humans; Incidence; International studies; Internationality; Male; Meat; Meat products; Medical research; METAANALYSIS; Milk; Nutrients; Nutrition; Nutrition & Dietetics; Nutrition and Dietetics; POLYMORPHISMS; Prevention; Prevention of disease and conditions; Principal components analysis; risk; RISK-FACTORS; SMOKING; Stroke; SYSTEM; Urinary Bladder Neoplasms; Urinary Bladder Neoplasms - epidemiology; Urogenital system; Urologic Diseases; Variables; VEGETABLES; Food groups; Epidemiological studies; Data mining; Bladder cancer
• ISSN: 0007-1145; 1475-2662; 1475-2662
• DOI: 10.1017/S0007114520001439

At present, analysis of diet and bladder cancer (BC) is mostly based on the intake of individual foods. The examination of food combinations provides a scope to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of the diet and aims to overcome the limitations of the study of nutrients and foods in isolation. This article aims to demonstrate the usability of supervised data mining methods to extract the food groups related to BC. In order to derive key food groups associated with BC risk, we applied the data mining technique C5.0 with 10-fold cross-validation in the BLadder cancer Epidemiology and Nutritional Determinants study, including data from eighteen case–control and one nested case–cohort study, compromising 8320 BC cases out of 31 551 participants. Dietary data, on the eleven main food groups of the Eurocode 2 Core classification codebook, and relevant non-diet data (i.e. sex, age and smoking status) were available. Primarily, five key food groups were extracted; in order of importance, beverages (non-milk); grains and grain products; vegetables and vegetable products; fats, oils and their products; meats and meat products were associated with BC risk. Since these food groups are corresponded with previously proposed BC-related dietary factors, data mining seems to be a promising technique in the field of nutritional epidemiology and deserves further examination.