Healthy lifestyle and cancer survival: A multinational cohort study

Lifestyle factors after a cancer diagnosis could influence the survival of cancer survivors. In a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, researchers evaluated the associations of a combination of healthy lifestyle factors with overall cancer survival, leveraging data from four prospective cohorts of cancer survivors (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES], National Health Interview Survey [NHIS], UK Biobank [UKB] and Kailuan study) in three countries.
A healthy lifestyle score (HLS) was defined based on five common lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol drinking, diet, physical activity and body mass index) that related to cancer survival. Researchers estimated the hazard ratios (HRs) for the associations of individual lifestyle factors and HLS with all-cause and cancer mortality among cancer survivors.
During the follow-up period of 37,095 cancer survivors, 8927 all-cause mortality events were accrued in four cohorts and 4449 cancer death events were documented in the UK and US cohorts. Never smoking (adjusted HR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.69-0.86), light alcohol consumption (adjusted HR = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.82-0.90), adequate physical activity (adjusted HR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.85-0.94), a healthy diet (adjusted HR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.61-0.78) and optimal BMI (adjusted HR = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.85-0.93) were significantly associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality. In the joint analyses of HLS, the HR of all-cause and cancer mortality for cancer survivors with a favourable HLS (4 and 5 healthy lifestyle factors) were 0.55 (95% CI 0.42-0.64) and 0.57 (95% CI 0.44-0.72), respectively.
This multicohort study of cancer survivors from the United States, the United Kingdom and China found that greater adherence to a healthy lifestyle might be beneficial in improving cancer prognosis.
Source: Bian Z, Zhang R, Yuan S, Fan R, Wang L, Larsson SC, Theodoratou E, Zhu Y, Wu S, Ding Y, Li X. Healthy lifestyle and cancer survival: A multinational cohort study. Int J Cancer. 2024 May 15;154(10):1709-1718.