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Updated: Jan 13, 2026

Visualization of Intensity Levels to Reduce the Gap Between Self-Reported and Directly Measured Physical Activity
Published on: March 7, 2019
Physical activity and risk of thyroid cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies
Heram Cho1, Yunseo Park2, Seung-Kwon Myung3,4,5
1Department of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, NSW, Australia.
Background:
The preventive effect of physical activity on the risk of thyroid cancer remains inconsistent and unclear. We investigated the association between physical activity and the risk of thyroid cancer using a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies.
Methods:
A systematic search of PubMed and EMBASE was conducted from inception till December 20, 2024. A pooled relative risk (RR) with its 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated using an adjusted RR with its 95% CI from each study.
Results:
A total of nine prospective cohort studies (N = 2 764 014 adults; incident thyroid cancer cases, 15 166) were included in the final analysis. In the meta-analysis of all the studies, highest physical activity was not significantly associated with the risk of thyroid cancer (RR, 0.91; 95% CI 0.76-1.09; I2 = 56.5%), compared with lowest physical activity. Physical activity was statistically significantly associated with a decreased risk of thyroid cancer in the studies conducted in Asia (RR, 0.75; 95% CI 0.64-0.88; I2 = 4.2%), but not in either Europe or North America. Also, physical activity was statistically significantly associated with a decreased risk of thyroid cancer in the studies published after 2015 (RR, 0.78; 95% CI 0.65-0.93; I2 = 22.1) and the high-quality studies (RR, 0.81; 95% CI 0.70-0.94; I2 = 5.2).
Conclusions:
Physical activity decreased the risk of thyroid cancer in the studies conducted in Asia, published after 2015, and rated as having high methodological quality. Further high-quality prospective cohort studies are warranted to confirm our findings.
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