• bladder neoplasms
• smoking
• coffee drinking

Tobacco consumption is the principal known risk factor for urinary bladder cancer. This relation has been analytically characterised on the basis of different aspects of the smoking habit (inhalation pattern, tobacco type, duration).1 2 Other risk factors described for bladder cancer are occupation and coffee consumption,1 3-5 although results for coffee consumption have been contradictory. The important role of cigarette smoking as a confounding factor has been one of the traditional difficulties hindering research into the association between coffee consumption and bladder cancer. In general, studies that have restricted analysis to non-smokers show a weak positive association for coffee consumption, with no effect observed among the smoker stratum. This latter finding is indicative that coffee drinking could have an “attenuator” effect on the risk associated with tobacco use.

In this report, we present the results of a new analysis of the association between cigarette smoking and bladder cancer, in which coffee drinkers were separated from non-coffee drinkers, an aspect that, to our knowledge, has never been published until now.