Being overweight or obese is now causing nearly half a million new cancer cases in adults every year, about 3.6 percent of the world’s total, a study said yesterday.
One-quarter of these cases are “realistically avoidable,” said the authors of the work published in The Lancet Oncology.
Led by scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the paper drew on a range of sources, including a large database of cancer incidence and mortality for 184 nations in 2012.
In men, being overweight was blamed for 136,000 new cases, more than two-thirds of them cancers of the colon and kidney. In women, it was linked to 345,000 cancer diagnoses, nearly three-quarters of which were post-menopausal breast, endometrial and colon cancers.
Mirroring the spread of obesity in developed nations, the tally was highest in North America, which accounted for nearly one-quarter of all weight-related new cancer cases.
Sub-Saharan Africa had the fewest, with 7,300 cases.
“Our findings add support for a global effort to address the rising trends in obesity,” lead researcher Melina Arnold said. “The global prevalence in adults has doubled since 1980. If this trend continues, it will certainly boost the future burden of cancer, particularly in South America and North Africa, where the largest increases in the rate of obesity have been seen over the last 30 years.”
Measured as a ratio of weight in kilograms-to-height in meters squared, a body mass index of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, while one of more than 30 is seen as being obese.
Meanwhile, The Lancet published an updated map of cancer survival that shed light on a persisting gulf between rich and poor nations, and within advanced economies.
The CONCORD-2 study looked at a key benchmark — the rate for survival five years after diagnosis — among 25.7 million patients who had had one of 10 common cancers.
For acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children — the most common childhood cancer — the rate ranged from 90 percent in Canada, Austria, Belgium, Germany and Norway, to just 16 to 50 percent in Jordan, Lesotho, central Tunisia, the Indonesian capital Jakarta and Mongolia.
In most developed nations, as well as in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, the five-year survival rate from breast and colorectal cancers has increased, due to earlier diagnosis and better treatment.
There remains a major gap in the survival rate of cervical and ovarian cancer. Five-year survival rates for these two types of cancer varies from more than 70 percent in Taiwan, Mauritius, South Korea, Iceland and Norway, to less than 40 percent in Libya.
Within Europe, the cervical and ovarian cancer survival rate is 60 percent or less in Britain, France, Ireland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Slovakia.
The study should be a barometer for national health policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researcher Claudia Allemani said.
“In some nations, cancer is far more lethal than in others — in the 21st century, there should not be such a dramatic gulf in survival,” Allemani said.
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