Research from a Swedish study suggests that enhancing cardiorespiratory fitness could reduce the risk of prostate cancer in men.
The study, conducted retrospectively, revealed that an overall improvement in absolute cardiorespiratory fitness, as measured by changes in VO2max, was associated with a 2% decrease in the risk of prostate cancer incidence (HR 0.98, 95% CI 0.96-0.99). This association remained significant even after adjusting for baseline fitness, age, education, year of last test, BMI, and smoking.
However, the study also found that changes in cardiorespiratory fitness were not linked to prostate cancer mortality.
Furthermore, when comparing different groups, men who experienced an annual increase in cardiorespiratory fitness of at least 3% had a 35% lower risk of developing prostate cancer compared to men whose fitness declined by 3% (HR 0.65, 95% CI 0.49-0.86), as reported by Kate A. Bolam, PhD, and colleagues at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in Stockholm.
In their article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Bolam and colleagues emphasized the importance of encouraging the general public to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness levels for potential cancer prevention benefits.
By stratifying participants based on their baseline cardiorespiratory fitness levels, the study found that only men with a moderate level of fitness at the beginning experienced a significantly reduced risk of developing prostate cancer (15% lower).
The study, which was a prospective cohort study, utilized the workplace health profile assessment database of the Health Profile Institute in Stockholm, incorporating data from more than 180,000 men assessed between 1982 and 2019.
After excluding outliers and conducting analyses, the final study cohort consisted of 57,652 men with a mean age of 41.4 years and an average BMI of 26 at baseline.
Over a mean follow-up period of 6.7 years, 592 men (1%) were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 46 (0.08%) passed away with prostate cancer as the primary cause of death.
The authors acknowledged that while the relationship between physical activity levels and cancer has been studied in various types of cancer, the evidence for prostate cancer has been inconclusive.
In contrast to other cancer types, some studies have shown that higher cardiorespiratory fitness may actually amplify the risk of prostate cancer incidence.
The findings from this study shed light on the impact of cardiorespiratory fitness changes on prostate cancer risk, highlighting the importance of focusing on prostate cancer prevention.
The authors suggest that the lack of association between cardiorespiratory fitness and prostate cancer mortality may be due to the limited number of prostate cancer-related deaths included in the study, along with competing risks from other chronic diseases associated with prostate cancer treatment side effects.