Vegetable and fruit intake and non-Hodgkin lymphoma survival in Connecticut women

We investigated whether an increased intake of vegetables and fruits favors NHL survival. A cohort of 568 female cases of incident NHL diagnosed during 1996-2000 in Connecticut was followed up for a median of 7.7 years. Adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated by Cox proportional hazard models. Our results show that a pre-diagnostic high intake of vegetables appeared to favor overall survival (HR = 0.74, 95% CI 0.57-0.98) among patients with NHL who survived longer than 6 months. In particular, pre-diagnostic high intakes of green leafy vegetables and citrus fruits were associated with 29% (95% CI 0.51-0.98) and 27% (95% CI 0.54-0.99) reduced risk of death, respectively. When different types of vegetables and fruits were investigated separately, their impacts were found to vary in NHL subtypes. Our study suggests that increasing vegetable and citrus fruit consumption could be a useful strategy to improve survival in NHL patients.