OBJECTIVE: To probe into the effects of living habit, diet, drug and hereditary factors related to daily life so as to reduce the incidence of carcinoma of large intestine through changing the life style.DATA SOURCES: Articles on carcinoma of large intestine published between January 1980 and December 2003 were retrieved in NCBI Entrez PubMed with the key words of "carcinoma of large intestine, epidemiology and prevention" and the language restricted to English. Meanwhile, articles on carcinoma of large intestine published between January 1994 and December 2003 were searched for in CNKI database with the Chinese key words of "carcinoma of large intestine, epidemiology and prevention" and the language restricted to Chinese.STUDY SELECTION: The related literature was selected by the primary tions, hormone level and genetic factors on the morbidity of carcinoma of excluding blind method was not required. Exclusion criteria: review articles and papers of meta-analysis and replicated studies.DATA EXTRACTION: Totally 84 related articles were collected, including 17 retrieved with retrospective approach. Fifty-eight articles met the inclusion criteria, and 26 papers were excluded. Among the excluded papers, 6 papers were about the basic biological and chemical research on carcinoma of large intestine, 12 were about different pathological types of carcinoma of large intestine and distribution of hospitalized cases, 4 were meta-analysis, and 4 were of popular science and delayed diagnosis due to physicians or patients themselves. The collected data showed that the morbidity and distribution of large intestine carcinoma were related to region,age, dietary factor, verminosis, heredity, hormone and chronic intestinal diseases and long-term stress.characteristics, trace element intake and living habits on the morbidity of responding preventive measures for reducing the incidence of large intestine carcinoma.CONCLUSION: With the improvement of living standard, the occurrence .and distribution of carcinoma of large intestine increase, presenting a tendency to occur in young people. Developing good life style and dietary habit and doing moderate exercise can prevent the occurrence of carcinoma of large intestine.