Obesity Increases Cancer Risk, Study Shows

Cancer specialists say there’s a need to better understand how fat cells fuel cancer growth so they might fight back.

“The cancer picture is a little bit more subtle,” says American Cancer Society epidemiologist Eugenia Calle. The risks of heart disease and diabetes from being obese are much higher, and more immediate because cancer typically develops more slowly than those illnesses, she explains.

According to Calle, fat is known to increase the risk of developing cancers of the colon, breast, uterus, kidney, esophagus, pancreas, gallbladder, liver and top of the stomach.

Fat cells apparently play different roles that can spur different types of cancer growth. Fat is linked to breast cancer in postmenopausal women. While anti-estrogen therapies are common, the fatter a woman is, the harder it is to lower hormone levels, one reason the obese have at least a 50 percent greater chance of dying from breast cancer than lean patients , Calle says.

An overweight woman has twice the risk of developing uterine lining cancer. Study shows the obese have up to triple the risk of kidney cancer. Obese men are 50 percent to twice as likely as lean men to get colon cancer. Then there are organ-by-organ reactions. Calle cites this example, the obese are particularly prone to “gastroesophageal reflux,” frequent heartburn where a backup of stomach acid onto the delicate esophagus eventually can lead to esophageal cancer.

Cuba Developed Lung Cancer Vaccine

Cimavax EGF, a therapeutic lung cancer vaccine was unvciled last week during a press conference in Cuba. Cuban scientists say that Cimavax EGF is the first in the world and extends the lives of victims suffering lung cancer by up to five months.

Cimavax EGF is the first registered vaccine in the world designed to battle lung cancer, said Gisela Gonzales of the Havana Molecular Immunological Center. Research on this vaccine, Gonzalez said, began in 1992, with the first clinical test in 1995.

The vaccine is based on two proteins that triggers an immune response from the victims body and has no side effect, Gonzalez said. The vaccine is available in Cuba, and will be commercialized in Latin America, starting in Peru, Gonzalez added.