Sleep linked to women's cancer

2008-11-19  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

Regular exercise can reduce a woman's risk of cancer, but the benefits may slip away if she gets too little sleep, researchers in the United States said on Monday.

The study involving 5,968 women in Maryland confirmed previous findings that people who do regular physical activity are less likely to develop cancer.

But when the researchers looked at the women aged 18 to 65 who were in the upper half in terms of the amount of physical exercise they got per week, they found that sleep appeared to play an important role in cancer risk.

Those who slept less than seven hours nightly had a 47-percent higher risk of cancer than those who got more sleep among the physically active women, researchers said at an American Association for Cancer Research meet.

"We think it's quite interesting and intriguing. It's a first look into this. It isn't something that has been widely studied," James McClain of the National Cancer Institute, part of the US government's National Institutes of Health, said.

McClain, who led the study, said it is unclear exactly how getting too little sleep may make one more susceptible to cancer. "Getting adequate sleep has been long associated with health," McClain said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls sleep loss an under-recognized public health problem, saying Americans are getting less and less slumber.