Sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors in relation to overall cancer and site-specific cancer risk: A prospective cohort study

Rongqi Zhang; Ying Lu; Zilong Bian; Siyun Zhou; Liying Xu; Fangyuan Jiang; Shuai Yuan; Xiao Tan; Xiangjun Chen; Yuan Ding; Xue Li

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.109931

Sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors in relation to overall cancer and site-specific cancer risk: A prospective cohort study

iScience. 2024 May 9;27(6):109931. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109931. eCollection 2024 Jun 21.

Authors

Rongqi Zhang¹, Ying Lu¹, Zilong Bian¹, Siyun Zhou¹, Liying Xu¹, Fangyuan Jiang¹, Shuai Yuan², Xiao Tan^{3

4}, Xiangjun Chen⁵, Yuan Ding⁶, Xue Li^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Big Data in Health Science School of Public Health and the Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
² Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Stockholm, Sweden.
³ Department of Big Data in Health Science, School of Public Health and Department of Psychiatry Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
⁴ Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁵ Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 268 Kaixuan Road, Hangzhou 310020, China.
⁶ Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, the Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
⁷ Centre for Global Health, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Abstract

Large prospective studies are required to better elucidate the associations of physical activity, sedentary behaviors (SBs), and sleep with overall cancer and site-specific cancer risk, accounting for the interactions with genetic predisposition. The study included 360,271 individuals in UK Biobank. After a median follow-up of 12.52 years, we found higher total physical activity (TPA) level and higher sleep scores were related to reduced risk of cancer while higher SB level showed a positive association with cancer. Compared with high TPA-healthy sleep group and low SB-healthy sleep group, low TPA-poor sleep group and high SB-poor sleep group had the highest risk for overall cancer, breast cancer, and lung cancer. Adherence to a more active exercise pattern was associated with a lower risk of cancer irrespective of genetic risk. Our study suggests that improving the quality of sleep and developing physical activity habits might yield benefits in mitigating the cancer risk.

Keywords: Cancer; Health sciences.