Eight more cancers are linked with being obese

EXPERTS have linked eight more cancers to being overweight or obese, nearly tripling the list from five to 13.

The study, by World Health Organisation (WHO) scientists, suggests the number of people who get the disease because of an unhealthy lifestyle is thousands higher than previously thought.

Until now, doctors believed only five cancers were linked to excess weight – breast, womb, bowel, kidney and oesophageal.

But a review of evidence, analysed by the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), adds eight more to the list – ovarian, stomach, liver, pancreatic, gall bladder, thyroid, the bone marrow cancer myeloma, and a type of brain tumour called meningioma.

Experts last night warned that Britain’s obesity crisis may mean cancer rates will increase at a higher rate than estimated.

They urged the Government, which came under severe criticism for its ‘watered down’ Childhood Obesity Strategy last week, to take the problem far more seriously.

Ministers were accused of caving in to pressure from the junk food industry, after they scrapped plans to ban TV adverts for unhealthy food and get rid of cartoon characters on children’s food packaging.

The strategy had no concrete rules to force manufacturers to reduce sugar in food – instead relying on voluntary agreements.

Twenty years ago, scientists began to realise that poor diets and sedentary lifestyles may be linked to some types of cancer.

They found that having more fat in the body changes the balance of hormones such as oestrogen, testosterone and insulin – which can each drive tumour growth.

In 2002, the IARC produced a list of five cancers which were linked to weight. Last night the same group of scientists – led by US experts at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis – released the extended list of 13.

Cancer Research UK has estimated that 18,000 cases of cancer in Britain every year are caused by excess weight, making obesity the biggest preventable cause of the disease after smoking.

But the latest findings mean that the real number will be far higher.

In the past, doctors stressed that cancer was down to genetics, and a diagnosis was simply ‘bad luck’.

But in recent years, experts have emphasised that the risk can be reduced with a healthy lifestyle.

They estimate that roughly 40 per cent of cancer cases may be avoidable – compared with 85 to 90 per cent of heart disease cases.

Study leader Dr Graham Colditz, whose findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said: ‘Lifestyle factors such as eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight and exercising, in addition to not smoking, can have a significant impact on reducing cancer risk.

‘Public health efforts to combat cancer should focus on these things that people have some control over. This is another wake-up call. It’s time to take our health and our diets seriously.’

Dr Jyotsna Vohra, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘This report adds to the overwhelming evidence that carrying too much weight increases the risk of cancer.

‘Yet the Government fails to take obesity seriously. Unless the Government acts, future generations will develop cancers that could have been avoided and an overwhelmed NHS will be unable to cope.’

‘It’s time to take our diets seriously’