Comment on “Life’s essential 8 and specific cancer risk and mortality in men and women: a population-based cohort analysis of 332,417 United Kingdom participants” and the inclusion of sleep in cancer focused guidelines

In the article titled “Life’s essential 8 and specific cancer risk and mortality in men and women: a population-based cohort analysis of 332,417 United Kingdom participants” by Yang et al. the authors applied the updated American Heart Association Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) guidelines for cardiovascular health to look at cancer risk. This was undertaken, in part, due to the addition of sleep health to the guidelines. While they observed a protective association with cancer overall; cancer is a heterogeneous set of diseases, occasionally with disparate risk factors, and the scoring of sleep in LE8 may not capture these nuances. Below, we review some of the shortcomings of applying LE8 to cancer risk, highlighting the need to develop cancer-focused guidelines.