Desk job workers face twice the risk of colon cancer--study
POSTED April 20, 2011 - 12:56 | POSTED BY Dipankar Roy
Last edited by Silky Chandvani on April 20, 2011 - 13:36
Terry Boyle, a Ph.D. aspirant, and his colleague from the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, University of Western Australia, observed a link between desk jobs and colorectal cancer, and found it to be independent of any recreational activity.
The two-year long study involving men and women aged 40-79 years living in Western Australia (WA) also observed the association in participants who were most recreationally active.
Researchers, however, found no link between desk jobs and the risk of proximal colon cancer.
The researchers said, "Sedentary behavior appears to be a novel and important risk factor for many chronic diseases.”
Population-based study
The population-based case-control study involved a total of 918 patients and 1021 control participants selected from the WA Cancer Registry.
Researchers collected data related on participants’ lifestyle, physical activity, and lifetime job history.
Jobs were categorized into five groups varying from sedentary (such as bookkeepers, computing professionals), light (teachers, hairdressers), medium (mechanics, nurses), heavy (plumbers, farmers) and very heavy (miners, fire-fighters).
The researchers found that participants who spent 10 or more years in sedentary work had almost twice the risk of distal colon cancer and a 44 percent increased risk of rectal cancer compared with those who did not had a sedentary work.
Lifestyle factors play major role
While proposing an increased blood glucose levels and decreased insulin resistance as the reason for the observation, the researchers said, “Our finding that sedentary work is associated with the risk of distal colon cancer but not proximal colon cancer adds to the evidence suggesting that lifestyle factors may play a larger role in distal colon carcinogenesis than in proximal colon carcinogenesis.”
“There is no clear mechanistic explanation, however, for why sedentary behaviour would increase the risk of distal colon and rectal cancers, but not proximal colon cancer,” they added.
“The findings of this study have occupational health implications, especially given that advances in technology have led to increasing amounts of sedentary behaviours at work and in other settings,” they said, advising on curbing the hours spent sitting.
The research has been published in the ‘American Journal of Epidemiology.’
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