500,000 cancer cases due to overweight every year

Nearly 500,000 cases of cancer due to obesity per year

01/12/2014

According to a recent study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a specialized agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), there are nearly half a million new cancers related to obesity each year. „We estimate that in 2012, 481,000 or 3-6 percent of all new cancer cases worldwide are attributable to a high body mass index.“ This is reported by the researchers involved in the study „The Lancet Oncology“. Accordingly, the rich countries of Europe and the United States are particularly affected by this development.

Most new cases in Eastern Europe
According to the study, 64 percent of obesity and obesity-related cancers were found in rich countries. Almost a quarter of this was accounted for by the USA, a total of around 111,000 cases. In a European comparison, Eastern Europe was hit hardest by 64,000 cases, while Southern Africa had the fewest diseases. „Overall, we see that while the number of cancer cases in the richer countries is still at a peak, similar effects are emerging in developing countries“, said Isabelle Soerjomataram, one of the lead authors of the study, in a press release from the IARC.

Women affected more often
Another result of the study is that women are more affected by this effect than men. "Women are disproportionately affected by cancers related to obesity," says IARC. Melina Arnold, one of the authors of the study. "For example, in postmenopausal breast cancer, the most common cancer in women worldwide, the study suggests that 10% of these cancers could be prevented by a healthy body weight." This also applies to uterine cancer. Thus, approximately 5.4 percent of all new cases in women (345 000 cases) were linked to obesity and obesity, whereas in men only 1.9 percent (136 000 cases).

According to the authors, around a quarter of the world's cancer cases could have been avoided if the population had maintained their average BMI of 30 years ago. Thus, the number of cases of obesity has doubled since the 1980s. For the future, the researchers see the expected development sober: „It is expected that the number of cancer cases associated with obesity and obesity will increase globally with economic development,“ so Dr. Christoph Wilde, head of the IARC. "This study underscores the importance of implementing effective weight-management measures to stem the high incidence of overweight cancer and prevent the problems faced by rich countries from replicating in the current rapid pace of development." (Jp)