Obesity is a problem faced by several people worldwide and may also lead to grave health issues. A study claims that obese patients suffering from colon cancer seemed to be at a bigger danger for death or recurring disease as opposed to those who are in the standard weight range.
There are roughly 150,000 new cases of colon cancer detected every year in the US and colon cancer may be inclined to affect men and women evenly. Astonishingly though, several patients are apparently not aware of the threat linked between obesity and cancer.
“Obesity has long been established as a risk factor for cancer, but our study in colon cancer patients shows that obesity predicts a poorer prognosis after the cancer is surgically removed,†commented, Frank A. Sinicrope, M.D., professor of medicine and oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
“More studies are now demonstrating that obesity plays a role as an independent risk factor for poorer patient prognosis that is unrelated to stroke or heart disease,†stated, James Abbruzzese, M.D., chairman of the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and an editorial board member of Clinical Cancer Research.
The outcomes of a recent survey from the American Institute for Cancer Research seem to exhibit that just 51 percent of the subjects were aware of the association between obesity and cancer, as opposed to 94 percent who apparently knew about the augmented cancer risk connected to tobacco use, and around 87 percent who were aware of the bigger cancer risk linked to sun exposure.
For the present study, Sinicrope and colleagues apparently assessed around 4,381 patients with stage II or stage III colon cancer who had been given adjuvant chemotherapy in clinical trials. Out of these patients, roughly 20 percent were overweight.
Obesity was believed to be notably associated with poorer by and large survival and seemed to be independent of other variables examined. The predictive impact was said to be more powerful in men as compared to women. Moreover, men in the highest body mass index category for obesity supposedly encompassed a 35 percent augmented danger of death as opposed to normal weight patients. The weaker effect in women is thought to be consistent with studies that have apparently displayed a lesser threat of developing colon cancer in obese women when pitted against obese men.
Sinicrope remarked that they do not know if this is due to biology or the way one measures obesity. Body mass index is a limited measure and there is evidence that abdominal fat may be a better predictor of colon cancer risk and perhaps prognosis in men than in women. There is also the potential influence of menopausal status and hormone replacement therapy in women.
The study was published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.