Abstract PO-173: Racial/ethnic differences and underlying behavioral mechanisms in the association between metabolic syndrome and cancer Free

Introduction: Recent epidemiological studies have suggested a trend of increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and certain types of cancer among adults under the age of 50. How is MetS associated with cancer in adults under the age of 50? How does the association vary by racial/ethnic groups? What are the potential lifestyle behavioral mechanisms? This study attempts to gain insights into these questions. Methods: We used data from the 2011–2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to define a case-control sample to examine the racial/ethnic disparities in the association of MetS and cancer of any type. We used chi-square test and binary logistic regression to examine the MetS and cancer association. All analyses were conducted in Stata 14. Results: From a total sample of 17,969 cases, we identified 15,463 no-cancer cases, and 1,584 cancer cases. We found that MetS was significantly associated with cancer risk in the total sample (odds ratio = 1.50, p = .005). This association was only found in the Asian subsample with marginal significance (odds ratio = 3.68, p = .06). Smoking was a significant mediator to the MetS-cancer association in the total sample; sleep duration was a marginally significant mediator in the African American subsample. Conclusion: To summarize, we found that the association between MetS and cancer vary by race/ethnicity for adults under the age of 50. The etiological and epidemiological mechanisms of such racial/ethnic disparities warrant future research. Our findings of racial/ethnic disparities between MetS and cancer contribute to the growing body of the literature and provide implications for future research and public health interventions. The next steps of our research are to: (1) conduct analysis in larger samples such as the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked database; (2) explore the etiological and epidemiological mechanisms of MetS-cancer association with sufficient power within each racial/ethnic group; and 3) design and implement integrative behavioral interventions among high-risk groups to reduce cardiometabolic and cancer risks.

Citation Format: Lin Zhu, Grace X. Ma. Racial/ethnic differences and underlying behavioral mechanisms in the association between metabolic syndrome and cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Conference: Thirteenth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2020 Oct 2-4. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(12 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-173.