Large Portion of Cancer Can Be Prevented, New Study Finds

A big proportion of cancer cases and deaths in U.S. individuals who are white maybe prevented if people stop smoking, avoid heavy drinking, maintained a BMI and exercises regularly - more than half of cancer deaths could be prevented and new cases of cancer could decrease by 40 percent to 60 percent according to new study published in JAMA Oncology.

In the new paper in JAMA Oncology, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School investigated data from two big cohort studies - the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The purpose was to assess how lifestyle factors were linked to a person's chance of getting cancer .

They used data from long-term studies of about 140,000 health professionals who update researchers on their health every two years for the analysis.

"Not surprisingly, these figures increased to 40 percent to 70 percent when assessed with regard to the broader U.S. population of whites, which has a much worse lifestyle pattern than our cohorts," Dr. Mingyang Song and Dr. Edward Giovannucci of Harvard Medical School wrote.

The authors addresses that including only white individuals in their PAR estimates may not be generalizable to other ethnic groups but the factors they considered have been established as risk factors in diverse ethnic groups too.

"These findings reinforce the predominate importance of lifestyle factors in determining cancer risk. Therefore, primary prevention should remain a priority for cancer control," the authors conclude.

Cancer is a leading cause of death in the United States. In 2016, an estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 595,690 people will die from the disease. Approximately 39.6 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2010-2012 data).