Details

Purpose: To understand how large-scale, routinely collected physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness data from high-quality datasets can provide a unique opportunity to deepen our understanding of the relationship between physical activity, fitness, and cancer.

Rationale: Physical activity is beneficial as both a preventative and treatment strategy for cancer. However, knowledge of the long-term patterns of physical activity and fitness before and after a cancer diagnosis is limited, mainly due to a lack of large-scale, high-quality, longitudinal data. In addition, understanding how long-term changes in physical activity and fitness are related to incidence of specific cancers and cancer-specific mortality can provide vital information for prevention and management.

Objectives:

1.   To discuss the advantages/disadvantages of routinely collected physical activity and fitness data within cancer epidemiology.

2.   To demonstrate how high-resolution routinely collected data can help us identify trajectories of physical activity before and after a cancer diagnosis in type 2 diabetes patients.

3.   To illustrate how routinely collected data allows us to investigate the impact of physical activity before and after a cancer diagnosis on total and specific cancer mortality in patients with diabetes.

4.   To understand the relationship between routinely collected fitness data and cancer incidence and cancer-specific mortality in the general population.

Summary:

The Chair will give background information on longitudinal studies examining physical activity and fitness in relation to cancer, and discuss strengths and limitations, particularly in relation to routinely collected data.

Dr. Heiland will present results from her work using Swedish nationwide register data to identify trajectories of physical activity before and after a cancer diagnosis in a clinical population.

Dr. Teleka will discuss physical activity in relation to cancer-specific and total cancer mortality within the same cohort.

Dr. Bøjsen-Moller will introduce another large cohort, the Health Profile Institute database, and will illustrate how he used routinely collected fitness data to study cancer incidence and mortality.

The Discussant will lead group conversation about other potential applications of routinely collected physical activity and fitness data, with a focus on causal inference methods.

Format:

1.  Introduction: Dr. Hannah Brooke (Chair), 15 min

2.  Dr. Emerald Heiland, 15 min

3.  Dr. Stanley Teleka, 15 min

4.  Dr. Emil Bøjsen-Moller, 15 min

5.  Discussion: Associate Professor Brigid Lynch (Discussant), 15min

Interaction: Participants in-person and online may submit questions that can be taken up during the discussion part of the live symposium, which will be facilitated by the Chair and Discussant.

Speaker