TOPLINE

A UK Biobank study found that individuals who adhered to four or five healthy lifestyle behaviours had reduced risks for 13 cancer types, including oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophageal, stomach, colorectal, liver, pancreatic, lung, kidney, bladder, and postmenopausal breast cancer and soft tissue sarcoma. Smoking and excess weight drove the broadest impact among individual factors.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted a prospective cohort analysis using data of 287,745 UK Biobank participants aged 37-73 years (mean age, 56.0 years; 48.8% women) who were recruited between 2006 and 2010 in England, Wales, and Scotland.
• A healthy lifestyle score (HLS) was calculated on the basis of five factors: non-smoking, moderate alcohol intake (≤ 12 g/d for women and ≤ 24 g/d for men), a healthy diet score (top 40% of a healthy diet score distribution), adequate physical activity (≥ 500 metabolic equivalents of task-hours/wk), and healthy BMI (> 18.5 to < 25.0); one point was assigned to each healthy behaviour, and scores were categorised as low (0-1), medium (2-3), or high (4-5).
• The researchers assessed the association between HLS categories and the risk for 27 cancer types. The median follow-up duration was 11.5 years.
• Overall, 12,947 participants developed cancer during follow-up, with prostate cancer in men (7195 cases; incidence rate, 4.31 per 1000 person-years) and breast cancer in women (4533 cases; incidence rate, 2.82 per 1000 person-years) being the most common.
• Population attributable fractions (PAFs) estimated the proportion of cancer cases linked to incomplete adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviours.

TAKEAWAY

• Participants with a high HLS had a 29% lower risk for overall cancer than those with a low HLS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.71; 95% CI, 0.68-0.74).
• A high vs low HLS was associated with reductions in the risk for 13 of 27 types of cancer: oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophageal, stomach, colorectal, liver, pancreatic, lung, kidney, bladder, and postmenopausal breast cancer, as well as soft tissue sarcoma; the most substantial reductions were observed for laryngeal cancer (HR, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.06-0.26), lung cancer (HR, 0.19; 95% CI, 0.16-0.22), and pharyngeal cancer (HR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.27-0.63).
• Non-smoking was associated with a reduced risk for 12 of 27 types of cancer, with the strongest associations observed for lung cancer (HR, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.11-0.14), laryngeal cancer (HR, 0.18; 95% CI, 0.12-0.26), and pharyngeal cancer (HR, 0.33; 95% CI, 0.25-0.43).
• Participants with normal BMI had a lower risk for seven cancer types, including kidney cancer (HR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.55-0.78), uterine cancer (HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.44-0.62), and oesophageal cancer (HR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.60-0.88).
• The highest PAFs for incomplete adherence to a healthy lifestyle were observed for laryngeal cancer (65.5%), lung cancer (51.9%), and pharyngeal cancer (30.2%), with smoking and overweight showing significant estimated PAFs for 12 and 10 cancer types, respectively.

IN PRACTICE

"Greater adherence to a healthy lifestyle was significantly associated with reduced risk of 13 of the 27 cancers investigated, extending current evidence beyond common cancers to less common and understudied cancers. Smoking and overweight were the lifestyle factors most frequently associated with the cancers investigated," the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE

The study was led by Jie Ding, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. It was published online on September 15, 2026, in the British Journal of Cancer.

LIMITATIONS

The UK Biobank cohort was not fully representative of the general population, given its predominantly White composition and a tendency to enrol healthier volunteers, potentially limiting generalisability. Most lifestyle and covariate data were self-reported, raising the possibility of measurement error and misclassification. Shifts in participants' habits over the study period could have further distorted exposure classification.

DISCLOSURES

This study was supported by a grant from the German Ministry of Education and Research. One author received a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council. The authors reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.