About 4 in 10 cancer cases and about a half of all adult deaths from the disease are tied to potentially modifiable risk factors, a new study finds.
Modifiable risk factors include obesity, diet, infections, alcohol consumption and exercise. Cigarette smoking was the leading risk factor, contributing to nearly 20% of all cancer cases and 30% of all cancer deaths in 2019, according to the report in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Researchers evaluated nationally representative data on cancer incidence and mortality and risk factor prevalence to estimate how many cases may have been attributed to modifiable risk factors. Smoking contributed to 56% of all cancers in men and nearly 40% in women, the data showed. Excess weight had the second largest impact on 7.6% of cases while alcohol consumption was behind 5.4%, UV radiation exposure was tied to 4.6%, and physical inactivity was a culprit in 3.1% of cases.
The proportion of cases caused by potentially modifiable risk factors ranged from 100% for cervical cancer and Kaposi sarcoma to 4.9% for ovarian cancer and exceeded 50% for 19 of 30 cancer types that the team assessed. Additionally, 92.2% melanomas, 94.2% of anus cancers, 89.9% of larynx cancers, 88.2% of lung cancers and 83.7% of oral cancers were linked to modifiable risk factors.
“Despite considerable declines in smoking prevalence during the past few decades, the number of lung cancer deaths attributable to cigarette smoking in the United States is alarming. This finding underscores the importance of implementing comprehensive tobacco control policies in each state to promote smoking cessation, as well as heightened efforts to increase screening for early detection of lung cancer, when treatment could be more effective,” Farhad Islami, MD, senior scientific director, cancer disparity research at the American Cancer Society and lead author, said in a statement.
Maintaining a healthy body weight and diet can reduce cancer cases and deaths, as many types of cancer are linked to body weight, especially in younger people, the authors noted.Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Helicobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), human herpes virus-8 (HHV-8, also called Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and human papillomavirus (HPV) were some of the infections tied to cancers, the authors wrote.
