Monday Lunch Livestream

with Associate Professor Brigid Lynch

13 February 2023

Associate Professor Brigid Lynch will discuss recent epidemiological evidence suggesting that physical inactivity may increase the risk of up to 13 different types of cancer.

It was previously estimated that 1,814 (1.6% of incident cancers) were attributable to physical inactivity in Australia in 2010, when only three sites (breast, colon, endometrium) were considered attributable to physical inactivity. We now estimate that 6,361 of the cancers observed in 2015 were attributable to physical inactivity, representing 4.8% of all cancers diagnosed. This suggests that more than three times as many cancers are attributable to physical inactivity than previously reported. However, epidemiological evidence in this field tends to be afflicted by numerous biases; this uncertainty needs to be resolved before physical activity is prominently addressed by cancer prevention policy or programs in Australia.

This presentation will demonstrate how triangulating evidence from traditional epidemiological studies with findings from Mendelian randomisation studies and systematic reviews of mechanistic studies can enable us to draw causal conclusions about whether physical activity reduces cancer risk.