excess fat was responsible for a 300% faster rate of metastasising tumour cells

Increasing numbers of people are becoming aware of the higher risk of cancer from being obese and new research coming from Purdue University has actually quantified how excessive fat on your body increases the rate of cancer cells metastasising. The scientists saw that in laboratory testing done with animals, excess fat was responsible for a 300 percent faster rate of metastasising tumour cells.

Using sophisticated imaging technology they were able to document exactly how the extra fat on the animals caused the individual cancer cells to change. They also were able to actually count the number of cancer cells in the blood of laboratory mice who were fed a high fat content that compared to other mice fed a low fat diet.

Professor Ji-Xin Cheng, from the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry at Purdue University explained that this new diagnostic technique could be used to help see whether cancer is spreading around the body. He went on to say that while the medical profession knows that obesity and bad diet are responsible for around a third of cancers it is not exactly clear why. This new research which shows how a rise in lipids is directly linked to a rise in the metastasis of cancer cells is another step on the way to fully understanding the link between cancer and obesity.

It is important that men and women understand that it is not just their hearts which are at risk from being obese but that they are in great danger of sending themselves to an early grave from many different cancers. Professor Thuc T. Le from the National Institutes of Health said that previously most of the connections made between obesity and cancer were purely anecdotal but this study was clear clinical evidence. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and was published in the medical journal BMC Cancer.