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17-07-2018 | Survival | News

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Alcohol use, physical inactivity after cancer diagnosis linked to poor survival

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medwireNews: US researchers stress the need for effective interventions to reduce alcohol use and increase physical activity in patients with advanced cancer.

The recommendations follow their analysis of 334 patients diagnosed with malignancies of the hepatobiliary or pancreatic system at a single institution and followed up for 18 months. After accounting for demographic, psychological, and disease-specific factors, alcohol use was associated with a significant 4.67-fold increased risk for death relative to no use, while physical activity reduced the risk significantly by 43%.

And although depressive symptoms were not a significant predictor of reduced mortality, they were linked to physical inactivity.

Jennifer Steel, from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and co-investigators therefore call for a “[g]reater dissemination and implementation of effective interventions” to target these health behaviors, noting that “[i]t will be important to include the assessment and treatment of depression in any [such] interventions.”

The findings are published in Cancer.

By Shreeya Nanda

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group

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