Self-rated health and cancer risk – a prospective cohort study among Danish women

Abstract

Background: Self-rated health (SRH) has been shown to be a strong predictor of mortality from a number of major chronic diseases, however, the association with cancer remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible association between change in SRH and cancer incidence. Materials and methods: SRH and information on lifestyle and other risk factors were obtained for 13-636 women in the Danish Nurse Cohort. Cancers that developed during 12 years of follow-up were identified in the National Patient Registry. An association between SRH and cancer was examined in a Cox proportional hazards model with adjustment for age, smoking, alcohol, marital status, physical activity, body mass index and estrogen replacement therapy. Results: No significant association was found between SRH and overall cancer incidence in the ageadjusted Cox proportional hazards model (1.04; 95% CI 0.93-1.16), even after adjustment for potential confounding factors (HR 1.08; 95% CI 0.96-1.21). Likewise, there was no significant association between SRH and breast cancer (HR 1.09; 95% CI 0.89-1.33), lung cancer (HR 1.03; 95% CI 0.71-1.49) or colon cancer (HR 1.08; 95% CI 0.75-1.54). Conclusion: SRH is not significantly associated with the incidence of all cancers or breast, lung or colon cancer among Danish female nurses. Women who reported a decrease in SRH between 1993 and 1999 had the same risk for cancer as those who reported unchanged or improved SRH.

The association between life satisfaction, vitality, self-rated health, and risk of cancer

“…It is noteworthy that our results regarding the inverse association between SRH and the risk of cancer differ from the results of previous prospective studies, which have found no evidence indicating that SRH plays an independent role in overall cancer causation [13,14,[16][17][18]. Compared with some of these studies [13,16,17] the present study comprises a larger study population and thus more statistical power.…”

“…A Norwegian cohort study included 25,532 participants and 10 years of follow-up, but no data were reported on marital status, which is associated with QOL and is an important predictor of the development of cancer [18]. A Danish cohort study included 12,843 nurses aged 44+ and 12 years of follow-up, but data were only available for women [14].…”

“…So far, most of the reviewed prospective studies have focused on psychological factors such as negative life events, depression, fatigue, feelings of helplessness, perceived stress, distress, stress-prone personality, unfavorable coping styles and depressive mood [1,2,8,[10][11][12]. However, in recent years, a few studies have emerged on the prospective association of the risk of cancer with self-rated health (SRH) and quality of life (QOL) [13,14]. Such quality of life-related factors may be of great importance to population-based cancer prevention, which aims to target early, inclusive and easily identifiable risk factors for development of cancer, in general, or for specific sites [15].…”

“…SRH and social relations were not found to be significantly associated with the risk of cancer [13]. In another study, the association between SRH and the risk of cancer was investigated in a population of 12,843 Danish female nurses aged 44+ with a maximum of 12 years' follow-up adjusting for marital status, lifestyle factors, body mass index and estrogen replacement therapy [14]. The study did not find an increase in the risk of cancer among women with poor SRH, neither regarding overall cancer incidence nor regarding specific cancers such as breast, colorectal and lung cancers.…”

Self‐rated health in mothers of children hospitalised for severe illnesses and mothers of healthy children: cross‐sectional study

“…Interestingly, poor SRH is not correlated with stroke-related mortality (10). At the same time, SRH does not seem to be associated with the incidence of such disease as breast, lung or intestine cancer (11). It was also proved that SRH is connected with the functioning of the immune system and the occurrence of inflammatory response indexes.…”