Men working in office jobs are much more likely to get prostate cancer

A team of researchers from the University of Athens has shown that men who work sitting at a desk are more likely to develop prostate cancer than manual workers.

Scientists studied 320 prostate cancer patients and compared them with a similar group of men free from the disease. They looked at whether levels of physical activity in the workplace were linked with tumours and found that having a desk job significantly increased the risks.

The findings, published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, reveal that men who worked as civil servants, teachers or in office jobs were much more likely to get cancer than those who spend much of their day on their feet, such as labourers, bakers, barbers and confirm the benefits of regular exercise in reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Although exercise during leisure time is thought to protect against a range of cancers, few studies have looked at workplace activity.