Physical Activity and Colorectal Cancer Risk by Sex, Race/Ethnicity, and Subsite: The Multiethnic Cohort Study.

Abstract

Physical activity has been associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer. However, data is lacking on whether the association is consistent between sexes and across different races/ethnicities and anatomic subsites of tumors. We analyzed data from the Multiethnic Cohort in Hawaii and California, consisting of mostly African Americans, Native Hawaiians, Japanese Americans, Latinos, and whites ages 45-75 years at recruitment. During a mean follow-up of 16.8 years, 4,430 invasive adenocarcinoma cases of the colorectum were identified among 172,502 eligible participants. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the HR and 95% confidence interval (CI). The multivariate-adjusted HR (95% CI) for the highest versus lowest quintiles of physical activity (metabolic equivalent hours of moderate or vigorous activities per day) was 0.76 (0.66-0.87) in men (P trend < 0.001) and 0.94 (0.80-1.11) in women (P trend = 0.53, P heterogeneity by sex = 0.07). Sleeping and sitting hours were not associated with colorectal cancer risk both in men and women. In men, the inverse association was statistically significant among African Americans and Japanese Americans, for right colon and rectal cancer, and in all body mass index groups, although heterogeneity tests were not significant across race/ethnicity or anatomic subsite of tumors. The findings confirm the inverse association between physical activity and colorectal cancer, which appears to be stronger in men, and suggest possible differences in the strength of the association by race/ethnicity and anatomic subsite of tumors.