Population‐based data registries suggest novel insight into malignancy and metabolism

Abstract

Modern times offer incredible opportunities in many aspects of human life sciences. Great strides are apparent in many fields and disciplines, which are enabled by trends and developments in society, science, economy, and the multifaceted interfaces between them. Novel therapeutic agents are conceptualized, investigated, and introduced into clinical use at staggering rates. These rely on ongoing efforts by clinicians and basic scientists to implement them in an efficacious, safe, and cost-beneficial method. Novel understanding of the biomechanisms underlying human diseases paves the way for these efforts, with the increasing aid of digital resources.In the current issue of Cancer, Levi and colleagues investigate the association between overweight and obesity status at adolescence and the risk for developing pancreatic malignancy later in life. 1 The authors demonstrate a positive association between body mass index (BMI) in and above the 75th percentile with such risk, from the 75th percentile and above for men and from the 95th percentile for women. Stratification according to BMI groups (75th to 85th, 85th to 95th, and >95th percentiles) revealed increasing risk with higher BMI populations. These investigators interconnected data from 2 registries in Israel: a database of Jewish military candidates aged 16 to 19 years undergoing compulsory medical examinations before military service and the Israeli National Cancer Registry, which includes reported cases of pancreatic malignancy. The former database encompasses essentially all candidates for military service from the past 6 decades. This large database, encompassing approximately 2 million individuals, has been used previously in several epidemiologic studies, including by our group. [2][3][4]