Purpose: To ascertain whether prolonged television viewing time was associated with lung cancer incidence in Japanese adults aged 40-79 years from a nationwide large-scale cohort study.
Methods: A total of 54,258 adults (23,090 men and 31,168 women) without a history of cancer at baseline (1988-1990) were enrolled and followed for a median of 15.6 years. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 % confidence interval (CI) for lung cancer according to television viewing time adjusted for age and other possible confounding factors.
Results: During the study period, 798 participants were diagnosed with lung cancer. The HR of male participants who watched television for more than 4 h daily was 1.36 (95 % CI 1.04-1.80) compared with <2 h/day.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that reducing the amount of time spent watching television may be beneficial for preventing lung cancer.