The Correlation Between Bladder Cancer and Obesity, Overweight, Physical Inactivity, and Tobacco Use: An Ecological Study in Asian Countries.

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world.

This study aimed to determine the correlation between age-standardized incidence rates of bladder cancer and some risk factors in Asian countries through an extensive ecological analysis.

This ecological study evaluated the correlation between age-standardized incidence rates of bladder cancer and obesity, overweight, physical inactivity, and tobacco use in 30 Asian countries. To determine the factors that were significantly related to age-standardized incidence rate of bladder cancer, a univariate analysis was performed using simple linear regression. In the next step, variables with p-values less than 0.25 were entered into a multivariate linear regression model.

The incidence of bladder cancer was higher in countries with higher prevalence of overweight (r2 = 0.36, p < 0.001), obesity (r2 = 0.34, p = 0.001), current daily tobacco use (r2 = 0.17, p = 0.03), and physical inactivity (r2 = 0.13, p = 0.04). The results of multiple regression analysis indicated a direct correlation between the incidence of bladder cancer and overweight (β = 0.15, p < 0.001) and current daily tobacco use (β = 0.21, p = 0.001).

There was a significant relationship between the incidence of bladder cancer and overweight and current daily tobacco use. Further epidemiological studies are needed to confirm this relationship.

Annals of global health. 2019 Jul 10*** epublish ***

Fatemeh Rezaei, Hamid-Reza Tabatabaee, Vahid Rahmanian, Alireza Mirahmadizadeh, Soheil Hassanipour

Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, IR., Research Center for Health Sciences, Institute of Health, Department of Epidemiology, School of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, IR., Research Center for Social Determinant of Health, Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, Jahrom, IR., Non-communicable Diseases Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, IR., Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, IR.