Obesity Strongly Linked to Cancer Death Risk

In the largest study of its kind, researchers have found that overweight and obesity could account for 14% of all US cancer deaths in men and 20% of those in women, for a total of 90,000 cancer deaths a year. The study was published in the April 24, 2003, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers, from the American Cancer Society (ACS, Atlanta, USA), identified many forms of cancer not previously linked to unhealthy body weight. These included stomach (in men), liver, pancreas, prostate, cervix, and ovarian cancer as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The findings also substantiated previous studies linking overweight and obesity to cancers of the colon and rectum, breast (in postmenopausal women), uterus, kidney, esophagus, and gallbladder.

The study involved more than 900,000 US adults who were free of cancer at enrollment in 1982. During the 16-year follow-up period, there were 57,145 deaths from cancer. The researchers examined the relationship between BMI (a measure of body fat based on height and weight) and subsequent risk of death from all cancers, while controlling for other risk factors such as smoking.

"Many Americans have not acknowledged the contribution of obesity to chronic disease in general and to cancer in particular,” said lead author Eugenia E. Calle, Ph.D., director of analytic epidemiology for the American Cancer Society. "For example, women are very concerned about breast cancer, but few understand that obesity doubles their risk of getting and dying from the disease.”