Impact of healthy lifestyles on cancer risk in the Chinese population

Background

Although cancer has become one of the leading health burdens, to the authors' knowledge, evidence regarding its relationship with a healthy lifestyle in the Chinese population remains limited.

Methods

The authors evaluated the association between clustering of healthy lifestyle factors and cancer risk using 3 prospective cohort studies with 101,208 Chinese adults from the general population. Hazard ratios (HRs) and corresponding 95% confidential intervals (95% CIs) related to healthy lifestyle factors were calculated using Cox proportional hazard models, and population‐attributable risk percentages were estimated further.

Results

The results demonstrated that each additional healthy lifestyle factor was associated with a 6% (range, 3%‐9%) lower risk of overall cancer. Compared with having none to 3 healthy lifestyle factors, HRs related to adherence to all 6 healthy lifestyle factors were 0.78 (95% CI, 0.60‐1.02) and 0.82 (95% CI, 0.67‐1.00), respectively, for men and women. It was estimated that approximately 18.4% and 2.3%, respectively, of overall cancer cases for men and women were attributable to nonadherence to all 6 healthy lifestyle factors.

Conclusions

The results of the current study indicate that adherence to clustering of healthy lifestyle factors was associated with a reduced risk of cancer incidence among Chinese adults. Greater efforts urgently are needed to promote the adoption of multiple healthy lifestyle behaviors to reduce the increasing burden of cancer.

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