For many years now doctors and scientists have argued that there is a link between obesity and cancer. Many studies have been done that either directly or indirectly support such linkage. Hundreds of studies, in fact. And now researchers from the University of Manchester-Christie Hospital and the University of Bern (Switzerland) have weighed in with a meta-analysis or combined analysis of 221 of these studies in a paper that appeared in the prestigious medical journal, Lancet.

Researchers involved in the study looked at 250,000 cases of cancer to determine to what degree the development of these various kinds of cancer was associated with a 5kg/m² increase in body mass index (What is BMI?). Calculate your BMI  

Following on the heels of findings made public by the World Cancer Research fund during 2006, the Lancet study revealed that a 5kg/m² increase in BMI had increased not only the risk of developing common cancers such as breast, bowel and kidney, but also less common forms such as blood cancers (myeloma and leukemia) and skin cancer (melanoma).

In men, a 5kg/m² increase in BMI raised the risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma by 52%, thyroid cancer by 33%, and both colon and kidney cancers by 24% each.

In women, a 5kg/m² increase in BMI bolstered the risk of endometrial cancer by 59%, gallbladder by 59%, esophageal adenocarcinoma by 51%, and kidney cancer by 34%.

The researchers found weaker, but significant, positive associations between increased BMI and postmenopausal breast, pancreatic, thyroid, and colon cancers in women; malignant melanoma and rectal cancer in men; and multiple myeloma, leukemia, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in both sexes. They found the associations were much stronger in men than in women when it came to colon cancer - 24% in men compared with 9% in women.

The study culled cancer data from all over the world, and while the results for North America, Europe, Australia and the Asia-Pacific region were generally similar, there was a stronger link between increased BMI and both premenopausal and post-menopausal breast cancers in Asia-Pacific populations.

In comments that accompanied the paper, Dr Susanna Larsson and Dr Alicja Wolk, Division of Nutritional Epidemiology, National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, (Stockholm, Sweden) said that: "The number of deaths per year attributable to obesity is about 30,000 in the UK and ten times that in the USA, where obesity has been estimated to have overtaken smoking in 2005 as the main preventable cause of illness and premature death."

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Reference:University of Manchester (2008, February 18). Obesity Increases Cancer Risk, Analysis Of Hundreds Of Studies Shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 18, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/02/080217211802.htm