Body Fatness and Cancer — Viewpoint of the IARC Working Group

Avoidable cancer cases in the Nordic countries – The impact of overweight and obesity

“…(2,3,16) All cancer sites where convincing/sufficient evidence of a causal link to body fatness exists in at least one of these sources were included, except meningioma of the brain and prostate cancer. The cancer sites included were cancers of breast (postmenopausal), colon, rectum, pancreas, endometrium, kidney, liver, oesophagus (adenocarcinoma), gastric cardia, gall bladder, ovary, thyroid and multiple myeloma.…”

“…Meningioma is from a pathological point of view a benign tumour, and recording of these in cancer registries are heterogeneous and incomplete. The IARC working group concluded "limited evidence for an association with fatal prostate cancer " (2) but fatal cases are difficult to define. We therefore decided not to include these two sites into our study.…”

“…(10, 42) For thyroid cancer, multiple myeloma and gastric cardia cancer we used RRs from the meta analyses referred to in the report from the IARC working group, assuming that the RR for obese is the RR for overweight squared when categorical exposure was used. (2,(43)(44)(45) The RRs used in our estimations are presented in Table 1.…”

“…(1)(2)(3) In part, the link to cancer may be explained by alterations in the metabolism of endogenous hormones, including sex steroids, insulin, and insulinlike growth factors, distorting the balance between cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis, or a low-grade chronic inflammatory state promoting tumour development. (4) The increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in the Nordic and other countries (5-7) and cancers attributable to this, make prevention of overweight and obesity an important public health approach to lower the future cancer burden in the Nordic countries.…”

Harveian Oration 2016: Some observations on the causes and consequences of obesity

“…The links of obesity with uterine, breast and bowel cancer are statistically robust, but as yet the mechanisms remain unclear. 69 One very common disorder where the link with obesity is particularly strong is type 2 diabetes. Indeed, much of the public health concern surrounding obesity relates to its impact on the incidence of type 2 diabetes with all its disabling and expensive complications.…”