Obesity, body mass index, and cancer:
A prospective study of a large participant pool of 404,576 men and 495,477 women examined the association between body mass index and the risk of death from cancer at specific sites. After 16 years of follow-up, there were 32,303 deaths from cancer in men and 24,842 deaths from cancer in women. For most individual cancer sites, there was an association between body mass index and mortality. There was a positive linear trend in death rates with increasing body mass index for all cancers. Men in the highest body mass index group (>40) were 52% more likely to die of all cancers than men in the lowest body mass index group (18.8 – 24.9). For women the risk was even greater, at 62%. The conclusion of the study was that the proportion of all deaths from cancer attributable to overweight and obesity in U.S adults over 49 years old may be a high as 14% for men and 20% for women. The author stressed that more than 90,000 deaths per year from cancer might be avoided if everyone in the adult population could maintain a body mass index under 25 throughout life. (45)