Gastric band Surgery In France ‘Alarming’ rise in cancer rates driven by diabetes, obesity New research crunches the numbers on diabetes- and obesity-related cancers and projects a steep rise in diagnosed cases. Scientists’ projections for diabetes- and obesity-related cancers worldwide are not at all encouraging. Researchers at several institutions worldwide – including Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Lyon, France – have recently established that cancers related to metabolic diseases, especially diabetes and obesity, have an increasingly high incidence. According to the team’s data, 5.6 percent of all cancer cases throughout the world in 2012 were linked to pre-existing diabetes and a high body mass index (BMI), which is defined as over 25 kilograms per square meter. Of this total, 3.9 percent of cases were attributable to diabetes – almost twice as many cases as were related to a high BMI. Lead study author Dr. Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard and colleagues also worked out the estimates for the probable incidence of cancers related to diabetes and other metabolic disease in the next few years, and their prognosis is not encouraging. The researchers’ study findings were published yesterday in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. Diabetes, high BMI increasingly dangerous According to reports published last year in The Lancet, around 422 million adults worldwide live with diabetes, and 2.01 billion adults are overweight or obese. These numbers are particularly concerning, since diabetes and obesity are established risk factors for many different types of cancer, such as colorectal and pancreatic cancer, as well as cancer of the liver and gallbladder, breast cancer, and endometrial cancer. The more prevalent these metabolic conditions, the more concerned specialists become that the risk of cancers related to them may also increase. “As the prevalence of these cancer risk factors increases, clinical and public health efforts should focus on identifying preventive and screening measures for populations and for individual patients.” Dr. Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard “It is important that effective food policies are implemented to tackle the rising prevalence of diabetes, high BMI, and the diseases related to these risk factors,” he adds. The new study took into account the increase in the incidence of 18 types of cancer related to diabetes and high BMI in 175 countries between 1980 and 2002. Using data provided by GLOBOCAN, the researchers studied the incidence of 12 types of cancer across 175 countries in 2012, taking into account patient age and sex. Dr. Pearson-Stuttard and colleagues noticed that the majority of cancer cases that were related to diabetes and a high BMI – that is, 38.2 percent of cases – could be pinpointed to high-income Western countries. The second highest occurrence was noted in east and southeast Asian countries,

Read more…