Percentage of cancer cases attributable to physical inactivity by US states, 2013-2016

Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise: October 4, 2021 - Volume - Issue -.

Doi: 10.1249 / MSS.000000000000002801

Commentary

This study was undertaken to calculate the proportion of cancer cases attributable to physical inactivity among adults aged 30 years and older from 2013 to 2016 in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia.

Gender-, age-, and state-specific adjusted prevalence estimates for eight physical activity categories from a large pooled analysis and cancer-specific relative risks for the same categories were used to calculate state-specific PAFs for stomach, kidney, esophageal (adenocarcinoma), colon, bladder, breast, and endometrial cancers.

As a result, when optimal physical activity was defined as moderate-intensity activity of 5 hours/week or more, equivalent to 15 or more metabolic equivalent tasks (MET)-hours/week, 3.0% (95% CI 2.9%-3.0%) of all incident cancer cases (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) were due to lack of physical activity and accounted for an average of 46,356 causative cases per year.

PAF ranged from 2.3% (95% CI 2.2%-2.5%) in Utah to 3.7% (95% CI 3.4%-3.9%) in Kentucky. By cancer site, PAF ranged from 3.9% (95% CI 3.6%-4.2%) in bladder to 16.9% (95% CI 16.1%-17.7%) in stomach.

These analyses show that promoting physical activity through widespread implementation of interventions can prevent many cases of cancer, and suggest that if the US population met the recommended 5 hours/week of moderate-intensity (or 15 (MET) hours/week) physical activity, more than 46,000 cases of cancer could be avoided annually We suggest that this may be possible.