BERLIN—At least 124,000 new cancers in 2008 in Europe may have been caused by excess body weight, according to estimates from a new modeling, according to a new study from the European CanCer Organization (ECCO). The proportion of cases of new cancers attributable to a body mass index of 25kg/m2 or more were highest among women and in central European countries such as the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovenia and Bulgaria.
“As more people stop smoking and fewer women take hormone replacement therapy, it is possible that obesity may become the biggest attributable cause of cancer in women within the next decade,” said lead author Dr. Andre Renehan.
Using data from a number of sources including the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, researchers estimated that in 2002 (the most recent year for which there are reliable statistics on cancer incidence in Europe) there had been more than 70,000 new cases of cancer attributable to excess BMI out of a total of nearly 2.2 million new diagnoses across the 30 European countries.
The percentage of obesity-related cancers varied widely between countries, from 2.1 percent in women and 2.4 percent in men in Denmark, to 8.2 percent in women and 3.5 percent in men in the Czech Republic. In Germany it was 4.8 percent in women and 3.3% in men, and in the United Kingdom it was 4 percent in women and 3.4 percent in men.
The researchers then projected the figures forward to 2008, taking into account what was known about shifts in the distribution of BMI, the dramatic decline in women’s use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) from 2002 onwards following research that showed it increased the risk of breast cancer, and the wider use of PSA screening for prostate cancer in men.
They found that the number of cancers that could be attributed to excess body weight increased to 124,050 in 2008. In men, 3.2 percent of new cancers could be attributed to being overweight or obese and in women it was 8.6 percent The largest number of obesity-related new cancers was for endometrial cancer (33,421), post-menopausal breast cancer (27,770) and colorectal cancer (23,730). These three accounted for 65 percent of all cancers attributable to excess BMI.
“The study also identifies priorities for research into certain cancers, namely endometrial, breast and colorectal cancers. In the face of an unabating obesity epidemic, and apparent failure of public health policies to control weight gain, there is a need to look at alternative strategies, including pharmacological approaches,” he said.