Physical activity and cancer risk: a dose-response analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019.

OBJECTIVE: Adopting a healthy lifestyle, including regular physical activity, is widely believed to decrease cancer risk. This study aimed to quantitatively establish the dose-response relationships between total physical activity and the risk of breast, colon, lung, gastric, and liver cancers. METHODS: A systematic review and dose-response analysis were conducted using PubMed and Embase from January 1, 1980 to March 20, 2023. Prospective cohort studies that examined the association between physical activity and the risks of any of the 5 outcomes were included. The search was confined to publications in the English language with a specific focus on human studies. Physical activity is standardized by using the data from US National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) and the Global Burden of Disease 2019 database. RESULTS: A total of 98 studies, involving a combined population of 16,418,361 individuals, were included in the analysis. Among the included studies, 57 focused on breast cancer, 17 on lung cancer, 23 on colon cancer, 5 on gastric cancer, and 7 on liver cancer. Overall, elevated levels of physical activity exhibited an inverse correlation with the risk of cancer. The dose-response curve for lung cancer exhibited a non-linear pattern, with the greatest benefit risk reduction observed at 13,200 MET-minutes/week of physical activity, resulting in a 14.7% reduction in risk (relative risk 0.853, uncertainty interval 0.798 to 0.912) compared to the inactive population. In contrast, the dose-response curves for colon, gastric, breast, and liver cancers showed linear associations, indicating that heightened levels of total physical activity were consistently associated with reduced cancer risks. However, the increase in physical activity yielded a smaller risk reduction for colon and gastric cancers compared to breast and liver cancers. Compared to individuals with insufficient activity (total activity level < 600 MET-minutes/week), individuals with high levels of activity (≥ 8,000 MET-minutes/week) experienced a 10.3% (0.897, 0.860 to 0.934) risk reduction for breast cancer; 5.9% (0.941, 0.884 to 1.001) for lung cancer; 7.1% (0.929, 0.909 to 0.949) for colon cancer; 5.1% (0.949, 0.908 to 0.992) for gastric cancer; 17.1% (0.829, 0.760 to 0.903) for liver cancer. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated a significant inverse relationship between total physical activity and the risk of breast, gastric, liver, colon, and lung cancers.

Global patterns of cancer transitions: A modelling study.

Cancer is a major contributor to global disease burden. Many countries experienced or are experiencing the transition that non-infection-related cancers replace infection-related cancers. We aimed to characterise burden changes for major types of cancers and identify global transition patterns. We focused on 10 most common cancers worldwide and extracted age-standardised incidence and mortality in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019 through the Global Burden of Disease Study. Two-stage modelling design was used. First, we applied growth mixture models (GMMs) to identify distinct trajectories for incidence and mortality of each cancer type. Next, we performed latent class analysis to detect cancer transition patterns based on the categorisation results from GMMs. Kruskal-Wallis H tests were conducted to evaluate associations between transition patterns and socioeconomic indicators. Three distinct patterns were identified as unfavourable, intermediate and favourable stages. Trajectories of lung and breast cancers had the strongest association with transition patterns among men and women. The unfavourable stage was characterised by rapid increases in lung, breast and colorectal cancers alongside stable or decreasing burden of gastric, cervical, oesophageal and liver cancers. In contrast, the favourable stage exhibited rapid declines in most cancers. The unfavourable stage was associated with lower sociodemographic index, health expenditure, gross domestic product per capita and higher maternal mortality ratio (P < .001 for all associations). Our findings suggest that unfavourable, intermediate and favourable transition patterns exist. Countries and territories in the unfavourable stage tend to be socioeconomically disadvantaged, and tailored intervention strategies are needed in these resource-limited settings.

An assessment of morphological and pathological changes in paravertebral muscle degeneration using imaging and histological analysis: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: The high signal of paravertebral muscle (PVM) on T2-weighted image (T2WI) is usually considered to be fatty degeneration. However, it is difficult to distinguish inflammatory edema from fatty degeneration on T2WI. The purpose of this study was to identify different types of PVM high signal in patients with low back pain (LBP) through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and histology. METHODS: Seventy patients with LBP underwent MRI. The signal change of multifidus both on T2WI and fat suppression image (FSI) was quantified by Image J. Furthermore, 25 of the 70 patients underwent surgery for degenerative lumbar disease and their multifidus were obtained during the operation. Histological analysis of the samples was performed by HE staining. RESULT: Three types of PVM signal changes were identified from the MRI. Type 1 (n = 36) indicated fatty degeneration characterized by a high signal on T2WI and low signal on FSI. High signal on both T2WI and FSI, signifying type 2 meant inflammatory edema (n = 9). Type 3 (n = 25) showed high signal on T2WI and partial signal suppression on FSI, which meant a combination of fatty degeneration and inflammatory edema. Histological results were consistent with MRI. Among the 25 patients who underwent surgery, type 1 (n = 14) showed adipocytes infiltration, type 2 (n = 3) showed inflammatory cells infiltration and type 3 (n = 8) showed adipocytes and inflammatory cells infiltration. CONCLUSION: From our results, there are three types of pathological changes in patients with PVM degeneration, which may help to decide on targeted treatments for LBP.

Laser speckle contrast imaging for assessment of abdominal visceral microcirculation in acute peritonitis: does sequential impairments exist?

OBJECTIVE: It is believed that the microcirculation of multiple organs is impaired during acute peritonitis, however whether distinct susceptibilities of visceral microvasculature exist is still unknown. The present study aims to verify whether the microcirculatory alterations occur sequentially among multiple abdominal viscera during acute peritonitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Acute peritonitis was achieved on 29 Sprague-Dawley rats through colon ascendens stent peritonitis (CASP) model. With laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI), the microcirculation of the liver, ileum and renal cortex was monitored in each rat at baseline before CASP sepsis and continued monitoring at 4h, 8h, or 12h after the surgery. Another 9 rats served for sham operation. One-way analysis of variance with a post hoc Dunnett's test was used for analysis. RESULTS: The ileum microcirculation was impaired earliest from 342.1±61.0 laser speckle perfusion unit (LSPU) at baseline to 271.7±74.0 LSPU at 4h (P<0.05), while the decline of renal microcirculation was not obvious until 8h after peritonitis (289.1±111.2 vs 376.2±53.4, P<0.05). However hepatic microcirculation was not significantly changed during 12h of observation period. CONCLUSION: The microcirculation of various viscera has shown distinct susceptibilities to acute peritonitis: the ileum is more susceptible than the kidney, while the hepatic microcirculation seems to be the most resistant to peritonitis.