- Previous research has established a link between height and fat accumulation around the waist.
- While research has already shown that people of European ancestry who are tall or who have obesity are more at risk of colorectal cancer, new research has indicated that this pattern exists across a number of ancestral groups.
- Researchers propose that their analysis suggests that height is less associated with cancer risk than previously thought.
People who have obesity, or are tall with fat accumulation around their middle, are at an increased risk of colorectal cancer, regardless of their ancestry.
Repeated studies have made the link between obesity and height and increased cancer risk, including colorectal cancer. For example, a
Now, an international team of researchers has analyzed health data reported for 329,828 U.K. Biobank participants of Caucasian, African, Asian, and/or Chinese ancestries and shown that this pattern exists across all of them.
For the study, published in Science Advances, researchers looked at the impact of height, obesity, and fat distribution on an individual’s risk of colorectal cancer.
They split participants in the cohort into four groups based on their body shape as defined by height and fat distribution. They used data that had been collected on body mass index (a calculation that is used to infer adiposity), height, weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and waist and hip circumference to determine which group an individual fits into.
The four groups were:
- PC1 generally obese
- PC2 tall, but with more distributed fat mass
- PC3 tall, centrally obese
- PC4 lower height, high weight, and BMI but lower hip and waist measurements.
They found that individuals in the PC1 group had a 10 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer in this cohort, and those in the PC3 group, had a…
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