Placeholder while loading article actions
Body weight is considered a cancer risk factor, but can loss reverse that risk?
One study suggests that the answer is a resounding yes, at least for those who lose significant weight through bariatric surgery. According to research published in JAMA, patients who were operated on were 32% less likely to develop cancer and 48% less likely to die of cancer than their non-operated counterparts.
The results come from a long-term study of more than 30,000 Cleveland Clinic patients between 2004 and 2017. All patients had a body mass index of 35 or more, considered “class 2” or “moderate risk” obesity. by medical professionals.
The researchers tracked about 5,000 patients between the ages of 18 and 80 who underwent gastric bypass or gastric sleeve surgery during the study period. None of the people studied had been previously diagnosed with cancer.
About 74 percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight, according to the CDC
And their chances of developing or dying from obesity-related cancers, such as ovarian and pancreatic cancer, were significantly lower. During the study, 2.9 percent of patients who underwent surgery developed cancer, compared with 4.9 percent of their counterparts; 0.8% died, compared with 1.4% of non-surgical patients. The effects were observed at all levels and appeared to be independent of age, sex, or race.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.7 million new cancer cases were reported in 2019 alone. In addition, nearly 42 percent of American adults were obese by March 2020.
“Given the growing obesity epidemic, cancers associated with obesity are a major public health concern,” said Ali Aminian, director of the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and lead author of the study. . “If we help patients lose weight, we can significantly mitigate that risk.”
Bariatric surgery has gained momentum as a treatment for obesity in recent years, with some 256,000 such procedures performed in the United States in 2019, according to an industry group. The researchers said a “substantial weight loss” was needed to reduce the risk of cancer.
Other factors may be at play: it is unclear whether surgical patients took healthier lifestyle choices or whether non-surgical patients were reluctant to participate in cancer testing. Few of the patients were not white or black, indicating the need for further research.