Selected Articles from This Issue

The study by Wang and colleagues used Mendelian randomization and colocalization analyses to examine the causal role of 2,751 circulating proteins in endometrial cancer risk, using data from the UK Biobank and deCODE cohorts. Twenty proteins were associated with overall, endometrioid, or nonendometrioid endometrial cancer, with distinct biological pathways enriched by subtype. Mediation analysis showed weak evidence for circulating proteins linking body mass index to cancer risk. These findings highlight potential biomarkers and pathways relevant to endometrial carcinogenesis and may support the development of noninvasive tools for distinguishing cancer subtypes.In this population-based study of nearly 153,000 adults from the northern provinces of the Netherlands, Bos and colleagues found that adherence to the World Health Organization’s 2020 physical activity guidelines was associated with a 16% reduction in all-cause mortality following a cancer diagnosis, but not with a lower likelihood of being diagnosed with metastatic cancer. These findings indicate that the survival benefit of physical activity in cancer patients is not explained by earlier-stage detection. The results add to the growing body of evidence supporting physical activity as a modifiable factor that can improve survival outcomes in cancer patients.In this prospective cohort study, Asiimwe and colleagues examined the association between post-diagnosis health behaviors (measured as adherence to WCRF/AICR guidelines) and risk of mortality among 1,079 colorectal cancer survivors in the Multiethnic Cohort, a diverse group of participants recruited from Hawaii and Southern California. Higher adherence to WCRF/AICR guidelines was associated with 37% lower risk of mortality in long-term colorectal cancer survivors. These findings support the generalizability of prior studies examining adherence to WCRF/AICR guidelines in relation to cancer mortality to racially and ethnically diverse patients with colorectal cancer.Pancreatic cancer-associated skeletal muscle loss has critical implications for treatment response and development of comorbidities including cachexia. However, the development of edema can confound measurements of skeletal muscle changes. Davis and colleagues assessed the impact of edema on post-diagnosis changes in total cross-sectional skeletal muscle area versus psoas muscle as an alternative. The authors found that postdiagnosis edema leads to underestimation of total muscle loss while psoas muscle changes were largely unaffected by edema. These findings support psoas muscle as a proxy for total skeletal muscle when measuring after diagnostic muscle loss and therefore represents a critical consideration for body composition assessment.