Fig. 2.

Association of post-diagnostic consumption of ultra-processed food subgroups with mortality among colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated in the Cox proportional hazards regression model after adjusting for age at diagnosis (continuous), sex, and cancer stage (I, II, III, and unspecified), pre-diagnostic consumption of ultra-processed foods (continuous), year of diagnosis (continuous), tumor grade of differentiation (1–3 and unspecified), subsite (proximal colon, distal colon, rectum and unspecified), post-diagnostic alcohol consumption (<0.15, 0.15–1.9, 2.0–7.4, ≥7.5 g/d), current smoking (yes or no), pack-years of smoking (0, 1–15, 16–25, 26–45, >45), body mass index (<23, 23–24.9, 25–27.4, 27.5–29.9, ≥30 kg/m²), physical activity (women: <5, 5–11.4, 11.5–21.9, ≥22 metabolic equivalent of task (MET)-hours/week; men: <7, 7–14.9, 15–24.9, ≥25 MET-hours/week), and regular use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (≥2 tablets per week). The false discovery rate (FDR) method with a 0.05 threshold was applied to account for multiple comparisons. HRs and 95% CIs (highest vs. lowest quintile) were plotted with solid symbols representing point estimates of HRs and whiskers indicating 95% CIs. Abbreviation: CVD, cardiovascular disease.