Obesity Tied To Higher Pancreatic Cancer Risk

Dorothy123 · New User Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 6

New research suggests that obesity may raise older adults' risk of developing pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.
The study, by researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, found that men and women who were severely obese were 45 percent more likely than normal-weight adults to develop pancreatic cancer over five years.

Abdominal obesity, in particular, was linked to a higher risk of the disease among women, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Pancreatic cancer is difficult to catch early, and 95 percent of patients die within five years of being diagnosed. Because of this dismal prognosis, researchers consider it particularly important to pinpoint the modifiable risk factors for the disease.

Smoking is one such risk factor. Some studies have also implicated obesity and physical inactivity in contributing to pancreatic cancer, possibly because of their association with type 2 diabetes.

In type 2 diabetes, the body loses its sensitivity to the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin, which is produced by the pancreas; this leads to persistently high levels of insulin in the body. Insulin has growth-promoting effects, and it's thought that too much of the hormone may encourage pancreatic tumor cells to grow and spread.

In the current study, the relationship between obesity and pancreatic cancer weakened somewhat when the researchers factored in diabetes.

This suggests that diabetes is one reason obesity is linked to pancreatic cancer, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon.

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