Recreational physical activity and endometrial cancer risk

To investigate the association between recreational physical activity and endometrial cancer risk, a population-based case-control study was conducted in Washington State. The study included 822 incident cases of endometrial cancer diagnosed between 1985 and 1991 and 1,111 randomly selected population-based controls. Detailed information on recreational physical activities as well as other endometrial cancer risk factors was obtained in structured, in-person interviews. Unconditional logistic regression, adjusted for age, county, energy intake, unopposed estrogen use, income, and, in separate models, body mass index (kg/m(2)), was used to estimate the odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals, relating endometrial cancer to each level of physical activity. A greater proportion of controls (49.3%) than cases (40.5%) reported doing regular exercise (compared with no exercise: adjusted odds ratio = 0.62, 95% confidence interval: 0.51, 0.76) in the 2-year period prior to diagnosis date. There was little evidence of a trend of decreasing risk with increasing duration or intensity of recreational physical activities. These results provide support for an association between the lack of recent recreational physical activity and endometrial cancer risk. However, the absence of a difference by duration or intensity levels and the inconsistent results from other studies suggest caution before interpreting this association as causal.