Physical activity and reduced risk of ovarian cancer

Abstract

Leisure-time physical activity is associated with reduced occurrence of epithelial ovarian cancer.

Some life-style factors and the risk of invasive epithelial ovarian cancer in Swedish women

“…Most case-control studies evaluating physical activity and EOC risk reported inverse associations [17,30,33,34]. Other studies indicate an increased risk of EOC among women with high levels of physical activity compared with women who are less active [31,32], and this was also seen in two prospective investigations assessing EOC risk in relation to physical activity level [4,11].…”

“…Additional hypotheses focus on altered estrogen, androgen, and progestin levels [43], and on ovarian inflammation [33,44].…”

“…The divergent results among studies may be explained by different cut-off points between physical activity levels, difficulties in measuring physical activity, and also from methodological problems in defining the occupational and recreational contributions to the total amount of physical activity. Possible mechanisms explaining a reduced risk of EOC following physical exercise include less body fat, decreased estrogen levels, delayed menarche, and anovulation among those involved in vigorous physical activity [4,17,33,53,54]. An elevated risk of EOC with physical activity may be expected if ovulatory cycles are restored after weight reduction induced by physical activity, and by increased gonadotropins following estrogen reduction.…”

“…Most [3][4][5][6][7][8][9], but not all studies [10][11][12][13][14] indicate that there is a weak positive association between obesity and epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) risk. Studies where coffee consumption [6,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21], alcohol use [6,16,17,[21][22][23][24][25], cigarette smoking [6,16,21,[26][27][28][29], and physical activity [4,11,[30][31][32][33][34] were addressed in relation to ovarian cancer risk reported conflicting results. In the context of a nationwide case-control study on risk factors for epithelial ovarian malignancies, we here examine the association between these life-style factors and the risk of EOC.…”

Physical activity, body size and composition, and risk of ovarian cancer

“…Some previous studies have examined if there are particular exposure periods during which physical activity levels influence the risk of ovarian cancer. These have not found differential effects of physical activity on ovarian cancer risk over time, with some studies showing a protective effect [50][51][52][53][54] or null effect [33,55,56] over all time and age periods.…”