'The link between height and cancer risk seems to be common to many different types of cancer and in different people, suggesting that there may be a common mechanism, perhaps acting early in people’s lives'
By Pat Kelly. Research published recently suggests that tall women are at risk of a wider range of cancers than was previously suspected.
While previous studies have indicated that taller women are at a higher risk of a range of cancers, recent research published in the Lancet Oncology suggests that the range of cancers is wider than was previously thought.
Study author Dr Jane Green, Epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, analysed results from 1.3 million middle-aged UK women, 100,000 of whom were cancer sufferers. Dr Green found that the taller women in the study were more prone to an increased risk of cancer, including large bowel cancer, breast cancer and cancers of the ovary and womb. She found that the risk increased by 16 per cent for every 10cm above the average height. Age, socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol intake, medications and other factors were taken into account in the analysis, but the results still held true, said Dr Green.
She also noted that the increase in the average height of people of both sexes during the past century may suggest a correlation with the increase in cancer incidence. “The relation between height and cancer risk might underlie part of the difference in cancer incidence between populations, and changes in cancer incidence over time,” she concluded.
“Adult height in European populations has increased by about 1cm per decade throughout the 20th Century. The increase in adult height during the past century could thus have resulted in an increase in cancer incidence some 10-15 per cent above that expected if population height had remained constant. This assumes, of course, that the effect of height is independent of changes in other risk factors.”
She concluded: “The link between height and cancer risk seems to be common to many different types of cancer and in different people, suggesting that there may be a common mechanism, perhaps acting early in people’s lives.”
The full results of the study can be accessed via http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045%2811%2970154-1/fulltext.
pat.kelly@imt.ie
About Pat Kelly
Loading ...
