Up to 40% lower risk of 9 cancers in people with good cardiorespiratory fitness

Good cardiorespiratory fitness when young is associated with up to a 40% lower risk of developing 9 specific cancers later on-at least in men-suggests a large long term study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The researchers drew on linked Swedish registry data up to the end of 2019, covering background information, medical diagnoses, and deaths for conscripts who started their military service between 1968 and 2005.

Conscripts with a low level of cardiorespiratory fitness were slightly more likely to be obese, more likely to have a history of alcohol and substance misuse, and to have parents with lower educational attainment than conscripts with a higher fitness level.

In all, 365,874 conscripts had a low level of cardiorespiratory fitness; 519,652 had a moderate level; and 340,952 had a high level. The final analysis included more than 1 million men (1,078,000), 84,117 (7%) of whom subsequently developed cancer in at least one site during an average monitoring period of 33 years.

Compared with men with a low level of fitness at conscription, higher cardiorespiratory fitness was linearly associated with a lower risk of developing specific types of cancer. It was associated with a 5% lower risk of rectal cancer ; a 12% lower risk of pancreatic cancer ; an 18% lower risk of bowel cancer; a 19% lower risk of head and neck cancer ; a 20% lower risk of kidney cancer ; a 21% lower risk of stomach cancer ; a 39% lower risk of food pipe cancer ; a 40% lower risk of liver cancer ; and a 42% lower risk of lung cancer.

Reference: Associations between cardiorespiratory fitness in youth and the incidence of site-specific cancer in men: a cohort study with register linkage, British Journal of Sports Medicine, DOI 10.1136/bjsports-2022-106617