Colon Cancer Deaths Related To Obesity

More research is being done all over the world about obesity and its effects on health and yet another project has just proved another way that obesity can be life threatening. It now can be shown that if you suffer from obesity and you get colon cancer the chances of the disease recurring and the chances of you dying from it are much increased. The study that was completed at the University of Chicago shows that being obese (meaning that you have a Body Mass Index of thirty or above) also boost the chances of you getting the colon cancer in the first place.

The research that was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute explained that over four thousand colon cancer patients were monitored in 2 American clinical trials and it was noted that those with a BMI of 35 or more were seen to have a nearly 40% greater risk the tumor’s recurring when compared to normal weight people that had a BMI of less that 25. The statistics also showed that the BMI 35+ patients were also almost 25% more likely to succumb to the colon cancer in the two-year period after treatment.

Interestingly it was also seen that those patients who where underweight with an actual BMI of below 18.5, were also at an elevated risk of dying from colon cancer but the researchers felt that this increased risk of almost 50% was due to other things that were not linked to the cancer of the colon.

The researchers were not certain of the precise reason for the increased danger of obesity but it is likely to be linked to interplay between insulin-like growth issues and proteins. The researchers said that they need to do more study to establish if colon cancer patients who are obese could recover better if they were to lose body weight and so that doctors could advise colon cancer patients exactly of the risks that they were taking by being and remaining obese.