ASPO Abstracts
Physical Health Composite and Risk of Cancer Mortality
Category: Lifestyles Behavior, Energy Balance & Chemoprevention
Conference Year: 2020
Abstract Body:
It is unclear how resting myocardial workload, as indexed by rate-pressure product (RPP),
coupled with physical activity (PA) is associated with the overall risk of cancer mortality. We
performed prospective analyses among 28,810 men and women from the REasons for
Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort. We used a novel physical
health (PH) composite index and categorized participants into one of four groups based on
combinations from self-reported PA and RPP: 1) No PA and High RPP; 2) No PA and Low RPP;
3) Yes PA and High RPP; and 4) Yes PA and Low RPP. We examined the association between
PH composite and cancer mortality adjusted for potential confounders using Cox regression. A
total of 1191 cancer deaths were observed over the 10-year observation period, with the
majority being lung (26.87%) and gastrointestinal (21.49%) cancers. Even after controlling for
sociodemographics, health behaviors, baseline comorbidity score, and medications,
participants with No PA and High RPP had 71% greater risk of cancer mortality when compared
to participants with PA and Low RPP (adjusted HR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.42 – 2.06). These
associations persisted after examining BMI, smoking, income, and gender as effect modifiers
and all-cause mortality as a competing risk. Poorer physical health composite, including the
novel RPP metric, was associated with a nearly 2-fold long-term risk of cancer mortality. The
physical health composite has important public health implications as it provides a measure of
risk beyond traditional measure of obesity and physical activity.
Keywords: Physical activity; rate- pressure product; cancer; mortality