Approved research

Cancer Incidence and Premature Mortality Associated Early Phenotypic Risk Markers related to Lifestyle, Diabetes Mellitus, Obesity, other Chronic Diseases: An UK Biobank Prospective Cohort Study.

Lay summary

Cancer is already the second leading cause of death globally and is estimated to account for 9.6 million deaths in 2018, and the global cancer burden is expected to increase by 70% in the coming two decades. In fact, cancer and other chronic diseases (or non-communicable diseases [NCDs]) share many common risk factors, including aging and unhealthy lifestyles, such as smoking, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, obesity, and alcohol misuse. Certain NCDs, such as diabetes, may also predispose to cancer independent of these shared risk factors; however, most cancer prevention strategies focus on promotion to adoption of healthy lifestyle and on reduction in exposure to established cancer risk factors. Besides, available research evidence typically focused on the relationship between individual diseases and cancer risk or mortality. Perceivably, these NCDs often occur hand-in-hand (e.g. diabetes and obesity), we might get a better understanding of their contribution to cancer risk if we can study them at the same time. Because few data are available on this topic, we aim to test the individual and combined effects of type II diabetes mellitus, obesity, markers of metabolic syndrome and other chronic diseases on the risk and mortality of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancers. The proposed project will use existing data collected by UK Biobank and will take approximately 58 months to complete. A better understanding of the biological basis for cancer incidence and mortality would inform cancer prevention and treatment policy and strategies in the future.