Bariatric surgery, or weight-loss surgery, is normally used as a last resort when all other efforts have failed for obese patients who need to lose weight for their health. And now, researchers have found that the weight loss following such surgery significantly reduces the risk of endometrial (uterine) cancer in women.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women. Though all women are at risk for this cancer, the risk increases with age, and most cases are found in women who have gone through menopause.
Researchers from the study, which is published in the April issue of the journal Gynecologic Oncology, note that obesity is a significant public health problem in the US.
The team, comprised of researchers from the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) and Moores Cancer Center, says around two thirds of adults in the US are overweight or obese. Though obesity is linked to a range of health risks, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer, it is also linked to cancer of the uterus in women.
To investigate these links in detail, the researchers analyzed a retrospective cohort study of over 7 million patients in the University HealthSystem Consortium database, which provides information from academic medical centers and affiliated hospitals in the US.
From this database, the researchers identified 103,797 patients with a history of bariatric surgery, and 44,345 had a diagnosis of uterine malignancy.
Dr. Kristy Ward, first author and senior gynecologic oncology fellow in the Department of Reproductive Medicine at UCSD School of Medicine, explains what they found:
"Estimating from various studies that looked at increasing body mass index (BMI) and endometrial cancer risk, a woman with a BMI of 40 would have approximately eight times greater risk of endometrial cancer than someone with a BMI of 25."
And she says that this risk will likely rise as BMI increases.
No comments:
Post a Comment