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Circulation. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 June 14. Published in final edited form as: Circulation. 2016 June 14; 133(24): 2370–2380. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.021101.

Whole Grain Intake and Mortality from All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Geng Zong, PhD1, Alisa Gao1, Frank B. Hu, MD, PhD1,2,3, and Qi Sun, MD, ScD1,3

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1Department

of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA

2Department

of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA

3Channing

Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

Abstract Background—Current findings on associations between whole grain (WG) intake and mortality are inconsistent and have not been summarized by meta-analysis.

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Methods and Results—We searched for prospective cohort studies reporting associations between WG and mortality from all causes, CVD, and cancer through February 2016 in Medline, Embase, and clinicaltrials.gov, and further included unpublished results from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III and NHANES 1999–2004. Fourteen studies were eligible for analysis, which included 786,076 participants, 97,867 total deaths, 23,957 CVD deaths, and 37,492 cancer deaths. Pooled relative risks (RR, 95% confidence intervals [95%CIs]) comparing extreme WG categories (high vs. low) were 0.84 (0.80, 0.88; P