Endometrial cancer and exercise

In a study presented at the Ninth Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, women who exercise for at least 150 minutes a week might have a reduced risk for endometrial cancer.

Hannah Arem, a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut presented the study and said that regular exercise cuts the risk even for women who overweight. This is important in light of the fact that body mass index (BMI) ???is one of the major risk factors for endometrial cancer,??? she explained. She added that exercise that counted in the study??™s tallies was ???moderate- to vigorous-intensity sports/recreational physical activity.???

Endometrial cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women in the United States. Ms Arem said that exercise, hormones and lifestyle factors explain up to 80% of risk for endometrial cancer.

Ms Arem and her team examined data collected from a case??“control study led by Herbert Yu, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. The team compared 668 women who had endometrial cancer with 665 age-matched control women. They were given questionnaires that collected data on physical activity levels in 29 different kinds of activities in the 2 to 5 years before the diagnosis of endometrial cancer. The activity was converted to metabolic equivalents (METs), which correspond to the intensity of exercise and allow for easier comparative analysis.

Results showed that in women exercising 7.5 MET hours per week (about 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity) risk of endometrial cancer was 34% lower than the risk women for who did not exercise at all. The study showed that women who were normal weight but inactive also had a 55% lower risk for endometrial cancer than inactive women who were overweight.

???Exercise is an important public health intervention for women at risk of endometrial cancer,??? concluded Ms. Arem.