Residential Mobility and Lung Cancer Risk: Data-Driven Exploration Using Internet Sources

Area of Science:

• Environmental Epidemiology
• Public Health Research

Background:

• Frequent relocation is a known stressor impacting emotional and psychological wellbeing.
• The potential link between residential mobility and physical health outcomes, specifically cancer risk, remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between frequent relocation and the risk of developing lung cancer.
• To determine if residential mobility patterns differ between lung cancer patients and a control group.

Main Methods:

• Web crawling and text mining techniques were employed to gather data from online obituaries and augmented LinkedIn profiles.
• Subject spatiotemporal histories were reconstructed using information on education and work experience.
• A comparative analysis was conducted between lung cancer subjects and a control group based on mobility frequency.

Main Results:

• Individuals diagnosed with lung cancer exhibited a higher frequency of relocation compared to the control group.
• This observed trend of increased mobility among lung cancer subjects was consistent across both data sources analyzed.
• The findings suggest a potential correlation between frequent relocation and lung cancer risk.

Conclusions:

• Frequent relocation may be associated with an elevated risk of lung cancer.
• Further research is warranted to elucidate the mechanisms underlying this association.
• Public health strategies could consider mobility patterns when assessing cancer risk factors.