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Observational epidemiological surveys (WG 3) page 74
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4.6 Conclusions
The concluding remarks are related to cataract because too few studies report on AMD to
propose any conclusion on this condition.
Whether tomatoes may protect against cataract remain an opened question. One study clearly
showed a highly significant decreased risk in Italians consuming more than 3 servings pert
week (Tavani et al. 1996). Two other studies from North America did not show any effect of
tomatoes consumption on cataract extraction. (Mares-Perlman et al., 1995, Brown et al.
1999). It can be noticed that age-adjusted relative risk for cataract decreased significantly
with increasing tomato sauce intake. The geographic differences suggest that other foods from
the diet may interfere on the development of cataract, a multifactorial disease.
For lycopene, the available studies based either on intake estimation (Brown et al., 1999,
Chasan-Taber et al., 1999; Lyle et al., 1999a) or on serum concentration (Lyle et al., 1999b)
do not show significantly decreased OR for cataract extraction, but a borderline significant
trend of reduced risk of nuclear cataract was observed with high lycopene intake.
Together these data indicate that tomatoes, tomato products and lycopene may have only
minor effect on cataract appearance, in contrast with other foods and components such as
spinach and lutein for which consistent epidemiological data have been shown. The possible
benefit of eating tomatoes and tomato products, associated with other fruits and vegetables,
may result from other components than lycopene, vitamin C and vitamin E for which
protective effects were found including, and possibly also from the synergy of all components
including β-carotene and folates.
Part 5: Tomatoes and tomato products, lycopene, other
carotenoids, vitamins C and E and ageing
There are no specific studies on tomatoes and lycopene. Therefore we report on antioxidants
present in tomatoes. Eventhough, there are few studies (8) reporting on this topic, among
them, 5 observational studies deserved to be reported in details. They are based on antioxidant
intake (4) or plasma concentrations (1) in 5 cohorts (Australia, The Netherlands, UK and
USA), one is really prospective, and the four others are cross-sectionnal at the beginning of
the study.