Skip to Main Content

An official website of the United States government

Physical activity and risks of breast and colorectal cancer: a Mendelian randomisation analysis.

About this Publication
Title
Physical activity and risks of breast and colorectal cancer: a Mendelian randomisation analysis.
Pubmed ID
32001714 (View this publication on the PubMed website)
Digital Object Identifier
Publication
Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 30; Volume 11 (Issue 1): Pages 597
Authors
Papadimitriou N, Dimou N, Tsilidis KK, Banbury B, Martin RM, Lewis SJ, Kazmi N, Robinson TM, Albanes D, Aleksandrova K, Berndt SI, Timothy Bishop D, Brenner H, Buchanan DD, Bueno-de-Mesquita B, Campbell PT, Castellví-Bel S, Chan AT, Chang-Claude J, Ellingjord-Dale M, ...show more Figueiredo JC, Gallinger SJ, Giles GG, Giovannucci E, Gruber SB, Gsur A, Hampe J, Hampel H, Harlid S, Harrison TA, Hoffmeister M, Hopper JL, Hsu L, María Huerta J, Huyghe JR, Jenkins MA, Keku TO, Kühn T, La Vecchia C, Le Marchand L, Li CI, Li L, Lindblom A, Lindor NM, Lynch B, Markowitz SD, Masala G, May AM, Milne R, Monninkhof E, Moreno L, Moreno V, Newcomb PA, Offit K, Perduca V, Pharoah PDP, Platz EA, Potter JD, Rennert G, Riboli E, Sánchez MJ, Schmit SL, Schoen RE, Severi G, Sieri S, Slattery ML, Song M, Tangen CM, Thibodeau SN, Travis RC, Trichopoulou A, Ulrich CM, van Duijnhoven FJB, Van Guelpen B, Vodicka P, White E, Wolk A, Woods MO, Wu AH, Peters U, Gunter MJ, Murphy N
Affiliations
  • Section of Nutrition and Metabolism, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
  • Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Ioannina, Greece.
  • Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
  • MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
  • Bristol Medical School, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
  • Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MA, USA.
  • German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DIfE), Arthur-Scheunert-Allee 114-116, 14558, Nuthetal, Germany.
  • Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
  • Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
  • Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
...show more
  • Former senior scientist, Dept. for Determinants of Chronic Diseases (DCD), National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), PO Box 1, 3720 BA, Bilthoven, Netherlands.
  • Behavioral and Epidemiology Research Group, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA, USA.
  • Gastroenterology Department, Hospital Clínic, Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBEREHD), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
  • Division of Gastroenterology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Division of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
  • Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
  • Department of Medicine, Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
  • Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Department of Preventive Medicine, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Institute of Cancer Research, Department of Medicine I, Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
  • Department of Medicine I, University Hospital Dresden, Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden), Dresden, Germany.
  • Division of Human Genetics, Department of Internal Medicine, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, OH, USA.
  • Department of Radiation Sciences, Oncology, Umea University, 901 87, Umea, Sweden.
  • CIBER de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain.
  • Center for Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
  • Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece.
  • University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI, USA.
  • Department of Family Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
  • Department of Clinical Genetics, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
  • Department of Health Science Research, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ, USA.
  • Departments of Medicine and Genetics, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve University, and University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH, USA.
  • Cancer Risk Factors and Life-Style Epidemiology Unit, Institute for Cancer Research, Prevention and Clinical Network - ISPRO, Florence, Italy.
  • Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 85500, 3508 GA, UTRECHT, Netherlands.
  • Clinical Genetics Service, Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
  • CESP, Fac. de médecine - Univ. Paris-Sud, Fac. de médecine - UVSQ I, Université Paris-Saclay, 94805, Villejuif, France.
  • Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
  • Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.
  • Department of Community Medicine and Epidemiology, Lady Davis Carmel Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
  • Department of Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
  • Epidemiology and Prevention Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy.
  • Department of Internal Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
  • SWOG Statistical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
  • Division of Laboratory Genetics, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
  • Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, OX3 7LF, Oxford, UK.
  • Huntsman Cancer Institute and Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
  • Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands.
  • Department of Radiation Sciences, Oncology Unit, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
  • Department of Molecular Biology of Cancer, Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.
  • Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland, Discipline of Genetics, St. John's, Canada.
  • University of Southern California, Preventative Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Section of Nutrition and Metabolism, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. MurphyN@iarc.fr.
Abstract

Physical activity has been associated with lower risks of breast and colorectal cancer in epidemiological studies; however, it is unknown if these associations are causal or confounded. In two-sample Mendelian randomisation analyses, using summary genetic data from the UK Biobank and GWA consortia, we found that a one standard deviation increment in average acceleration was associated with lower risks of breast cancer (odds ratio [OR]: 0.51, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.27 to 0.98, P-value = 0.04) and colorectal cancer (OR: 0.66, 95% CI: 0.48 to 0.90, P-value = 0.01). We found similar magnitude inverse associations for estrogen positive (ER+ve) breast cancer and for colon cancer. Our results support a potentially causal relationship between higher physical activity levels and lower risks of breast cancer and colorectal cancer. Based on these data, the promotion of physical activity is probably an effective strategy in the primary prevention of these commonly diagnosed cancers.

Related CDAS Studies
Related CDAS Projects