Prof Kay-Tee Khaw

Clinical Gerontology Unit
University of Cambridge
Cambridge

Diet, lifestyle and cancer - the EPIC study

Professor Kay-Tee Khaw is a leading expert in the field of health and disease. She is studying the links between lifestyle and the development of chronic diseases such as cancer. She is currently one of the principal UK scientists working on the EPIC study, a European-wide project investigating the links between diet, lifestyle and cancer.

EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition) is the largest study of its kind ever to be undertaken. It includes more than half a million participants from ten European countries. This study will show exactly which parts of our diet affect our risk of developing cancer.

Watch a short video about EPIC:

Professor Khaw is leading EPIC-Norfolk, which is monitoring over 30,000 people across East Anglia. Participants have been asked to fill out detailed diet and lifestyle questionnaires and this information is being fed into the European-wide analysis. EPIC has already reported several key findings. For example, diets high in red or processed meat lead to an increased risk of bowel and stomach cancers. To find out more results, visit the EPIC website.

Professor Khaw is leading the way in developing better methods for collecting information about people's diet and levels of exercise and relating this to the number of cancer cases diagnosed. Together with her team, she is studying blood and urine samples collected from the participants to study how things like nutrient and hormone levels are linked to cancer risk.

She will also explore how lifestyle choices interact with the information encoded in people's genes to determine their overall risk of cancer.

Professor Khaw's research, in collaboration with EPIC-Europe, is revealing how people's lifestyle affects their general health and their chances of developing cancer. This work has important implications for cancer prevention as raising awareness of these findings will help people make lifestyle choices to reduce their risk of disease.