Research Led by Fellows - News Updates
Summaries of research led by DCEG fellows.
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A new NIH study of 85,000 adults in the United Kingdom found that individuals who engaged in light- and moderate-to-vigorous-intensity daily physical activity had a lower risk of cancer than individuals who were more sedentary. Participants in the study wore accelerometers to track their total daily activity, its intensity, and daily step count. The researchers determined that a higher step count, at any pace, can help lower cancer risk.
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Health data of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander individuals have often been aggregated, but Jacqueline B. Vo, Jaimie Z. Shing, and colleagues observed significantly higher death rates among Pacific Islander individuals compared to Asian Americans between 2018 and 2020.
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A new study by Dr. Eleanor Watts and investigators in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch explores how physical activity influences metabolic pathways and how these changes might lower breast cancer risk. Higher physical activity was associated with a broad range of metabolic adaptations, highlighting potential role of fatty acid metabolism in breast cancer prevention.
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Multiple genetic loci are associated with lung cancer risk, but the underlying genetic mechanisms remain poorly understood. Dr. Jiyeon Choi from the Laboratory of Translational Genomics and her colleagues analyzed normal lung cells from ever- and never-smokers using single-cell multiomics. The data highlighted cell-type-specific gene regulation underlying lung cancer susceptibility.
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Investigators in the Clinical Genetics Branch, led by senior investigator Lisa Mirabello and former research fellow Maísa Pinheiro, used deep targeted sequencing to look for hotspot somatic driver mutations resulting from persistent infection with one of the three most carcinogenic types of human papillomavirus (HPV types 16, 18, and 45) in cells collected during routine screening for cervical cancer. These mutations may serve as a clinically meaningful biomarker of carcinogenesis in individuals with persistent HPV infection.
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In an analysis led by Dr. Wayne Lawrence and colleagues, using data from 12,610 Black and White men and women living in the United States, low neighborhood socioeconomic status experienced during young to middle adulthood was associated with higher risk of premature mortality. The relationship was most pronounced among women.
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Investigators in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, led by Drs. Cameron Haas and Eric Engels, identified several rare cancers not known to be caused by a virus, for which people with a compromised immune system had a higher risk, providing strong evidence that these cancers could be caused by an infectious agent.
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An NCI Cancer Currents blog post on advances in anal cancer screening features DCEG researchers in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology and Clinical Genetics Branches.
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Using the NCI’s HIV/AIDS Cancer Match Study data from 2001-2019, Jennifer McGee-Avila, postdoctoral fellow in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, finds that people with HIV are less likely to receive treatment for many different cancer types compared to people without HIV.
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Reductions in cigarettes per day and the amount of time smoked were both associated with lower risk of lung cancer among men in the prospective cohort study, Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study. Serial questionnaires collected every four months allowed for precision of estimates.
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African American, Hispanic, and Latino people, as well as individuals with limited education or experiencing poverty, reside in areas disproportionately affected by carcinogenic industrial emissions, a new study finds.
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A series of studies using data from the HIV/AIDS Cancer Match Study provide evidence to inform recommendations for anal cancer screening and emphasize the importance of early anal cancer detection and treatment among people with HIV. The papers were published by Drs. Haas and Shing, part of Dr. Shiels’s research group. The findings
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Poor sleep quality, as measured by accelerometers, was associated with a 15-20% greater risk of prostate cancer in a study of over 30,000 men in the UK Biobank. Neither sleep duration nor sleep timing were associated with prostate cancer risk. These novel findings need to be replicated in future studies and in more diverse study populations.
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Ms. Erica Stephens and Dr. Jaimie Shing used data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults to ascertain awareness of HPV and the HPV vaccine, as well as knowledge that HPV can cause cancers, by educational attainment, race, and ethnicity. They found profound disparities that signal the importance of continued education around HPV and the HPV vaccine.
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Using data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study, researchers in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch led the first study to explore the relationship between blood levels of PFAS and risk of kidney cancer in different racial and ethnic groups.
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Dr. Wayne Lawrence and colleagues found a rapid rise in death rates due to unintentional poisoning (drug overdoses) and firearm homicides in the U.S. from 1999-2020. Rates of death from external causes further accelerated in 2019 and 2020, after the onset of COVID-19.
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An analysis led by Drs. Jacqueline B. Vo in the Radiation Epidemiology branch and Jaimie Z. Shing in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch revealed disparities in incidence rates of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers in Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations when disaggregated by race and ethnicity.
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Drs. Jonathan Hofmann and Vicky Chang, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, and colleagues, reported exposure-response relationships between urine glyphosate concentrations and increasing levels of two established urinary biomarkers of oxidative stress.
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In the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a large multi-ethnic cohort with nearly two decades of follow-up, Dr. Wayne Lawrence and colleagues observed an association between discrimination and mortality across all racial/ethnic groups but strongest among Black participants.
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In a study of 82,000 UK adults, Dr. Eleanor Watts in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch observed that higher levels of physical activity were associated with a decreased risk of hospitalization from nine common conditions, including colon polyps and urinary tract infections.