The previous estimate was 10%, but when more accurate body fat measurements were applied, it increased four times.
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A new study shows that obesity is a strong cause of breast cancer. [사진=게티이미지뱅크]A new study shows that obesity is a strong cause of breast cancer. This is what the health and medicine webzine ‘Health Day’ reported on the 16th (local time) based on the results of a study by Spanish researchers published in Ournal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
A research team led by Professor Veronica Davila-Batista, an epidemiologist at the University of Las Palmas (ULPGC) in Spain, found that when more accurate estimates of body fat were applied, 38% of female breasts were found to be related to excessive body fat. In particular, 42% of hormone receptor-positive breast cancers caused by female hormones such as estrogen were found to be related to obesity. This is much higher than the existing estimate that one in ten breast cancer patients is related to being overweight based on body mass index (BMI).
The researchers argued that the true impact of obesity on breast cancer risk is likely to be underestimated because BMI is not an accurate measure of body fat. “Our findings support the importance of considering more accurately measures of body fat than BMI to estimate the cancer burden of obesity in postmenopausal breast cancer,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers compared CUN-BAE (Clinically Useful Body Fat Estimation Equation), another measure of body fat that reflects gender and age, with BMI. Based on these two measurements, the researchers measured the weight of 1,022 elderly Spanish women with breast cancer and 1,143 women without breast cancer.
As a result, the researchers found that about 23% of breast cancer cases were associated with being overweight, as measured by BMI. However, based on the CUN-BAE measure, approximately 38% of breast cancer cases were found to be related to excess fat.
These differences were most evident in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, the researchers noted. The risk of hormone-positive breast cancer due to excessive fat was 42% when converted to CUN-BAE, which was more than twice as high as the 20% when considered based on BMI alone.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, adipose tissue secretes female hormones, so high body fat can also increase a woman’s estrogen levels. “Our findings suggest that population impacts may be underestimated when using traditional BMI estimates and that more accurate measures of body fat, such as CUN-BAE, should be considered when estimating the burden of postmenopausal breast cancer due to obesity,” the researchers wrote.
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