A recent study has found that men having high fat concentration around the belly and waist are at a higher risk of prostate cancer-related death.
The study was presented recently at the European and International Conference on Obesity. The researchers studied more than two lakh U K men. They said that there was a link between central adiposity (concentration of body fat around the belly and waist) and the risk of death from prostate cancer. However, the researchers said that more study was needed.
This cancer affects one in six men during their lifetime. This cancer is the cause of more than a quarter of all new male cancer cases.
The Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK held the study. The study was funded by Cancer Research UK, aimed to understand how both total adiposity and the distribution of fat in the body relate to fatal prostate cancer.
The researchers selected 218,225 men who were voluntary participants in the UK Biobank study. (500,000 volunteers age 40-69 years recruited between 2006 and 2010). They were free cancer at the baseline date. They followed the health of these participants for 10.8 years using data from health administrative databases. They looked into the body mass index, total body fat percentage, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio.
In the study period, 571 men died from prostate cancer. Though a clear association of BMI or total fat percentage with the death risk could not be found, they found some positive link between measures of central adiposity and risk of prostate cancer death. They said that men who with 25 per cent for waist circumference were 35 per cent more likely to die of prostate cancer than men in the bottom 25 per cent.
Dr. Perez-Cornago, who was associated with the study, was quoted as saying that they found a significant association between concentration of body fat around the belly and waist and the risk of prostate cancer death. However, the doctor did not say if there was a clear relation between total body fat and risk of prostate cancer death.
