Outdoor light at night and risk of endometrial cancer in the NIH-AARP diet and health study

Oct 12, 2022Cancer causes & control : CCC

Outdoor light at night and risk of womb cancer in the NIH-AARP diet and health study

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Abstract

No association was found between outdoor light at night and endometrial cancer risk in a cohort of 97,677 postmenopausal women.

The study analyzed data from 1,669 cases of endometrial cancer and 991 cases of endometrioid adenocarcinomas.
Multivariable models estimated hazard ratios for varying levels of outdoor light at night exposure.
Results indicated a hazard ratio of 0.92 for endometrial cancer and 1.01 for endometrioid adenocarcinoma, suggesting no significant risk association.
Body mass index and menopause hormone therapy were associated with endometrial cancer risk, but no interactions with outdoor light exposure were found.
The findings were limited by the inability to account for individual exposure factors, indicating a need for future studies to enhance exposure characterization.

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PURPOSE: Outdoor light at night (LAN) can result in circadian disruption and hormone dysregulation and is a suspected risk factor for some cancers. Our study is the first to evaluate the association between LAN and risk of endometrial cancer, a malignancy with known relationship to circulating estrogen levels.

METHODS: We linked enrollment addresses (1996) for 97,677 postmenopausal women in the prospective NIH-AARP cohort to satellite imagery of nighttime radiance to estimate LAN exposure. Multivariable Cox models estimated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for LAN quintiles and incident endometrial cancer overall (1,669 cases) and endometrioid adenocarcinomas (991 cases) through follow-up (2011). We tested for interaction with established endometrial cancer risk factors.

RESULTS: We observed no association for endometrial cancer overall (HR0.92; 95% CI 0.78-1.08; p trend = 0.67) or endometrioid adenocarcinoma (HR1.01; 95% CI 0.82-1.24; p trend = 0.36). Although body mass index and menopause hormone therapy were both associated with risk, there was no evidence of interaction with LAN (p interactions = 0.52 and 0.50, respectively). Q1vsQ5Q1vsQ5

CONCLUSION: Our study did not find an association between outdoor LAN and endometrial cancer risk, but was limited by the inability to account for individual-level exposure determinants. Future studies should consider approaches to improve characterization of personal exposures to light.

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Outdoor light at night and risk of endometrial cancer in the NIH-AARP diet and health study

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