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Self-rated health in relation to fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity among older cancer survivors

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Abstract

Purpose

We aimed to investigate associations of self-rated health with fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC) and physical activity (PA) among older cancer survivors.

Methods

We used the 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to identify cancer survivors ≥ 65 years (N = 2663). Self-reported FVC and PA were categorized as ordinal variables to approximate quartiles. Low general health (LGH) was defined as fair or poor self-rated health. A multivariable logistic regression treating LGH as the outcome was used to calculate adjusted odd ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for FVC and PA. Restricted cubic spline depicted non-linear dose-response curves for FVC and PA. In comparative analysis, we used the same logistic regression and dose-response model to calculate ORs of FVC and PA in 73,134 people ≥ 65 years without cancer history.

Results

Overall, 470 (17.7%) survivors had LGH. Survivors’ mean age was 73.3 years (SD = 5.2), 55.1% of them were female, and 95.4% self-reported as white. In cancer survivors, FVC was not associated with LGH (≥ 28 vs. < 14 times/week: aOR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.75–1.39, p-trend = 0.50), whereas PA was inversely associated with LGH (≥ 30 vs. < 7 MET-hours/week: aOR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.41–0.75, p-trend < 0.01). Dose-response curves demonstrated consistent association patterns. In comparative analysis, ORs of PA did not change substantially but we observed inverse association for FVC.

Conclusions

An inverse association between PA and LGH was observed among older cancer survivors, but no significant association was obtained for FVC among them. Regular PA may maintain or indicate a favorable health in older cancer survivors, whereas impacts of FVC deserve further investigations.

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Author information

Author notes

  1. Dejana Braithwaite

    Present address: Department of Epidemiology, University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, Gainesville, FL, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oncology, Georgetown University School of Medicine, 3300 Whitehaven Street, NW, Suite 4100, Washington, DC, 20007, USA

    Dongyu Zhang, Zhikai Zhu, Judy Huei-yu Wang & Dejana Braithwaite

  2. Department of Epidemiology, New York University School of Global Public Health, New York, NY, USA

    Yuan Zhao

  3. Department of Epidemiology, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, Chicago, IL, USA

    Alpana Kaushiva

  4. School of Public Health, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China

    Zhikai Zhu

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  1. Dongyu Zhang
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Contributions

D.Z., Y.Z., and A.K. participated in conceptualization. D.Z. analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors participated in results interpretation and manuscript revision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dongyu Zhang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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We used publicly available de-identified data which does not require IRB approval.

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Zhang, D., Zhao, Y., Kaushiva, A. et al. Self-rated health in relation to fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity among older cancer survivors. Support Care Cancer 29, 2713–2722 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-020-05782-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-020-05782-6

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