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Excess body weight the cause of more than 100,000 new cases of cancer in 2008
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ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 Multidisciplinary Congress
In Europe, a projected 124,000 or more new cancers in 2008 may be the result of excess body weight, according to Andrew Renehan, PhD, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
The proportion of new cancers attributable to BMI >25 were highest among women in the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovenia and Bulgaria, Renehan said during a presentation of findings from a modeling study at the ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 Multidisciplinary Congress, held in Berlin.
“We have very clearly shown that the population of Europe is changing, and as the distribution of BMI in Europe is shifting to the left and getting bigger and women are coming off of hormone therapy, this value (cancer attributed to obesity) has been going up considerably over the last 10 years and is projected to keep going up,” Renehan said during a press conference.
Renehan and colleagues used data from sources including WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer to create a model to estimate the proportion of cancer attributable to excess body weight in 30 European countries.
They estimated that in 2002, there were more than 70,000 new cases of cancer attributable to excess BMI. This was out of a total of 2.2 million new diagnoses of cancer that year. Obesity-related cancer rates varied among countries. In Denmark, obesity-related cancers were observed in 2.1% of women and 2.4% of men. In the Czech Republic, the rates were 8.2% in women and 3.5% in men; in Germany, 4.8% in women and 3.3% in men; and in the United Kingdom, 4% in women and 3.4% in men.
In a projection for 2008, the researchers estimated that cancers attributable to excess body weight increased to 124,050 with men accounting for 3.2% and women accounting for 8.6% of new cancers. Endometrial (33,421) postmenopausal breast (27,770) and colorectal cancers (23,730) accounted for 65% of cancers attributable to excess body weight.
“We have to address this on a number of different fronts,” Renehan said. “We need to keep informing our policy makers at national and international levels. We need to inform them with robust data that’s not exaggerated and not sensationalized.”
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