In a new study from the University of Glasgow, researchers found obesity increases the risk of developing 10 of the most common cancers, regardless of how it is measured.
They found that central fatness (larger waist and hips) and general obesity (body mass index [BMI] and body fat percentage) are linked to similar estimates of cancer risk.
The results suggest that BMI is an adequate measure of cancer risk from excess weight, and there is no advantage in using more complicated or expensive measures such as waist circumference or body fat percentage.
It is well known that being overweight or obese is linked to an elevated risk of some cancers and premature death.
However, most of the evidence is based on BMI, and little is known about the association between cancer and other markers of adiposity (eg, central obesity and body fat).
In the study, the team used data from the UK Biobank and identified 437,393 adults (54% women; average age 56 years) who were cancer-free.
They focused on the risk of developing and dying from 24 cancers according to six markers of obesity: BMI, body fat percentage, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio, and waist and hip circumferences.
After an average of 9 years follow-up, there were 47,882 cases of cancer, and 11,265 cancer deaths.
The researchers found that all six obesity measures were positively and similarly associated with a higher risk for 10 cancers.
For example, each 4.2 kg/m2 (men) and 5.1 kg/m2 (women) increase in BMI above 25 kg/m2 (defined as being overweight) was linked with higher risk of cancers of the stomach (35% increase), gallbladder (33%), liver (27%), kidney (26%), pancreas (12%), bladder (9%), colorectal (10%), endometrial (73%), uterine (68%), postmenopausal breast (8%), and overall (3%) cancer.
Based on the results, the researchers estimate that if these associations were causal, being overweight or obese could be responsible for around 40% of endometrial and uterine cancers and 29% of gallbladder cancers; and could account for 64%, 46%, and 40% of deaths from these cancers respectively.
The team says the more severe obesity is, the higher the risk of developing and dying from these cancers, except for postmenopausal breast cancer.
But there was a lot of variation in the effects of obesity on different cancers. This suggests that obesity must affect cancer risk through a different number of processes, depending on the cancer type.
If you care about cancer, please read studies about this new method could help predict prostate cancer growth and findings of coffee drinkers could halve their risk of liver cancer.
For more information about cancer prevention and treatment, please see recent studies about common anti-inflammation drugs may help people survive head, neck, lung cancer and results showing that common early sign of heart disease also may show high cancer risk.
The study published in BMC Medicine. One author of the study is Dr. Carlos Celis-Morales.
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