Psychosocial factors like stress, loneliness or personality traits do not increase the risk of developing cancer. This is shown by a big international study published today in CANCER.
This study indicates that psychosocial factors—which influence how a person perceives, interprets, and reacts to their surroundings—do not affect an individual’s risk of developing cancer. For the study, investigators analysed data from the Psychosocial Factors and Cancer (PSY-CA) consortium, an international research collaboration funded by the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF). This consortium analyses information from prospective studies to assess whether psychosocial factors—such as perceived social support, loss of a loved one, relationship status, neuroticism, and general distress—are associated with an increased risk for cancer.
“PSY-CA has spent the last years researching a commonly held belief – that poor mental health or other potential psychosocial stressors increases the risk of cancer. Our findings do not support this notion. Furthermore, many of the small effects observed are often explained by unhealthy behaviours” lead author Dr. Lonneke A. van Tuijl, University Medical Centre Groningen
Risk factors
In the analysis of 421,799 individuals who had psychosocial factors measured at a single point in time, no psychosocial factors were associated with an increased risk of overall cancer. And no psychosocial factors were associated with increased risks of breast, prostate, colorectal, and cancers with alcohol as a common potential causal factor.
Perceived social support, currently not in a relationship, and loss of a loved one were associated with an increased risk of lung cancer. However, most of these risks decreased after adjusting for known risk factors, including smoking and family history of cancer.
In this study, researchers used data from various cohort studies and registries in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway, and Canada. Amongst the Dutch cohorts the NESDA study and HELIUS were included.
In the Netherlands, the following institutes were collaborating in PSY-CA: Amsterdam UMC, UMC Groningen, Utrecht UMC, Erasmus MC, Universiteit Maastricht, RIVM en Nederlands Kanker Instituut.
Authors involved in this study affiliated to the department of Psychiatry Amsterdam UMC are Joost Dekker, Adriaan Hoogendoorn, Femke Lamers, Aartjan Beekman and Brenda Penninx.
This project is larger and better designed compared to a previous study on this topic. We executed various two-stage individual patient data (IPD) meta-analyses. As a result, statements about psychosocial factors and the risk of cancer can be made with a high degree of certainty.
Previously an IPD meta-analysis was published on the association of depression and anxiety with cancer risk incidence (see more).
In the current study we investigated the relationship with other psychosocial factors like social support, loss of a loved one, relationship status, neuroticism and general distress.