International journal of cancerSep 16, 2024

Healthy lifestyle, genetic risk, and chances of developing pancreatic cancer over time

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 4, 2026

Abstract

Participants with high Life's Essential 8 scores had a 70% lower risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to those with low scores.

Moderate Life's Essential 8 scores were linked to a 53% reduction in pancreatic cancer risk.
High scores in Life's Essential 8 correlated with a lower risk of pancreatic cancer among individuals with high genetic susceptibility.
Participants with high Life's Essential 8 scores and low genetic risk showed the lowest pancreatic cancer risk.
An additive interaction was identified between Life's Essential 8 scores and genetic risk, indicating higher scores may provide additional benefits for those genetically predisposed.

Simplified

The association between the American Heart Association (AHA) Life's Essential 8 (LE8) and the risk of pancreatic cancer (PC) remains unclear. Our goal was to assess the relationships between LE8, genetic susceptibility, and PC risk. This cohort consisted of 234,102 participants from the UK Biobank. The components of LE8 include diet, nicotine exposure, sleep, physical activity, blood glucose, body mass index, blood lipids, and blood pressure. LE8 is classified into three categories: low cardiovascular health (CVH), moderate CVH, and high CVH. Measurements were made using Cox proportional risk models to estimate impact of associations between LE8, genetic susceptibility, and incidence of PC in participants. Compared to participants with low LE8 scores, those with moderate and high LE8 scores had a 53% (HR, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.39-0.57) and 70% (HR, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.22-0.41) lower risk of developing PC, respectively. Interestingly, among individuals with high genetic risk, high LE8 scores were associated with greater benefits (HR, 0.24; 95% CI, 0.15-0.40), whereas the protective effect was weaker among those with low genetic risk (HR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.21-0.75). Participants with a high LE8 score and a low polygenic risk score (PRS) had the lowest risk of PC (HR, 0.19; 95% CI: 0.11-0.33). Furthermore, we observed a significant additive interaction between LE8 and PRS. A higher LE8 score is associated with a lower risk of PC, especially for participants with a high PRS. These findings have important implications for participants most genetically predisposed to PC and for targeted strategies for PC prevention.

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Healthy lifestyle, genetic risk, and chances of developing pancreatic cancer over time

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