Fat Intake from Different Dietary Sources and Incidence of Pancreatic Cancer in Adults: An Updated Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Abstract

Previous meta-analyses on dietary fat and pancreatic cancer incidence have not explored the dose-response relationships. The current meta-analysis was conducted to assess the dose-response associations of total, animal, plant, meat, and dairy fat intake with pancreatic cancer risk in adults. A comprehensive literature search of relevant online databases was performed until April 2025 to detect eligible studies, identifying nine prospective cohort studies with a total sample size of 1,331,651 participants. Based on the highest versus lowest comparison, risk of pancreatic cancer was not significantly associated with dietary intakes of total (RR: 1.03, 95 CI: 0.87-1.20), animal (RR: 1.05, 95 CI: 0.70-1.57), plant (RR: 0.94, 95 CI: 0.82-1.07), meat (RR: 1.13, 95 CI: 0.89-1.44), and dairy fats (RR: 1.01, 95 CI: 0.81-1.26). However, in the subgroup analyses, we found a significant positive association between total fat intake and pancreatic cancer risk among studies with high-quality, defined based on the ROBINS-E tool (RR: 1.18, 95 CI: 1.04-1.34). In the dose-response meta-analysis, we did not find a linear or non-linear association between fat intake (total and different types of fats) and pancreatic cancer risk. Overall, our findings suggest that dietary fat intake is directly associated with pancreatic cancer when assessed in high-quality studies.