THURSDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Moderate alcohol intake may decrease the risk of kidney cancer in men, while exercise may decrease its rate in women, according to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Boston.
Wendy Setiawan, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues evaluated data from 167,200 ethnically mixed Americans, 375 of whom (246 men and 129 women) developed kidney cancer over eight years.
Moderate alcohol intake was associated with a one-third reduction in kidney cancer risk in men, but not women, while exercise was associated with a lower risk in women, but not men. Obese men had a 1.5-fold greater risk for cancer, and obese women had a more than twofold increased risk. Hypertensive men had an increased risk, as did hypertensive women. Cigarette smoking was also a risk factor.
"We discovered that body mass index increases risk, smoking and hypertension had independently higher risks of cancer, while physical activity and drinking appeared to reduce the risks. While smoking has long been associated with the cancer, some of the other risk factors are newly found associations and merit further study in preventing the disease," Setiawan said.
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