Cancer: Getting to the Fat of the Issue

By Patho (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

As the global cancer community convenes this week in Melbourne for the UICC World Cancer Congress, thousands of experts and cancer survivors are arriving into Australia to discuss, present and move this important agenda forward. One group that will be represented and speaking, is the World Cancer Research Fund International.

Last week, WCRF published a new blog following a Lancet Oncology article on the links between obesity and cancer. Not the first and most obvious connection one might make, what are the facts on this relationship?

• Overweight and obesity have been increasing dramatically in the last few decades - globally.
• In a 2012 study, Stevens et al estimated that 35% of the adult population is overweight and 12% obese – a doubling of prevalence since 1980.
• Overweight and obesity are known risk factors for a number of cancers including: oesophageal, bowel, kidney, pancreas, gallbladder, ovary, prostate and breast in women after menopause.
• One study estimated that in 2007 in the United States, about 34,000 new cases of cancer in men (4%) and 50,500 in women (7%) were due to obesity.

Now one of the major points to appreciated is the continued uncertainty around the relationship between obesity and cancer, and what causes it. But we know some things:

Connection Is Both Direct, and Indirect

The actual causes behind this link are still being explored by scientists around the world, but we know that some of the causes are direct, and some are indirect.