by kathleen doheny
health reporter
Can Weight Loss Cause Anxiety - Can Weight-Loss Surgery Lower Cancer Risk for the Obese?
Friday, (health news) - Weight loss surgery can do more than decrease the risk of heart problems and improve type 2 diabetes in obese patients: a new revision suggests that It can also decrease your chances of cancer diagnosis.
"Bariatric surgery is associated with reducing cancer risk in morbid obese people [to normal people - weight]," wrote the team of Brazilian researchers. His report was recently published in Obesity Surgery magazine. A morbid obese person is approximately 100 pounds with overweight, with a 40 or higher body mass index (BMI).
Cancer specialists in the United States who analyzed the findings were not completely convinced that surgery can reduce cancer risk to normal people. But they agreed that obesity raises the risk of certain cancers.
Brazilian researchers, hospital Sao Luke in Porto Alegre and other institutions, have gathered the results of 13 studies, including more than 54,000 people. Each study analyzed cancer rates after weight loss surgery.
Cancer rates in obese people are as high as two for 1,000 years (the number of years in which the number of people in a population affected by a certain disease).
However, in those who had surgery, the researchers found that the rate was about one for 1,000 years of age, or almost that of normal weight people. Monitoring varied from two to 23 years after surgery.
Bariatric surgery is held in the stomach and / or intestines to help with weight loss. Several approaches are used.
Risk reduction with weight loss surgery is "probably true," said Dr. Cy Stein, president of medical oncology and experimental therapy in the city of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California.
This would make sense, he said, since "the evidence that obesity is related to an increased risk of cancer is significant, even in modestly obese. There is an association [between obesity and cancer]. It is a risk factor for the development of cancer. "
According to American Cancer Society, it is estimated that one of the three deaths against cancer in the United States is connected to overweight, in the bad diet and / or inactivity. The connection between weight and cancer is stronger, society says, for breast cancer in women past menopause, colon and rectal cancer, and esophageal cancers, kidney, pancreas and uterine coating (endometrium).
Even so, another cancer specialist who revised the recommended finding "taking it with a grain of salt and a little hesitation."
"I would say that the evidence appears there. It is a reduction at risk," said Lauren Tera, a hematological cancer research director at the American Cancer Society. "It's hard to say for sure."
Even researchers suggest that the conclusion should be seen carefully, since the studies that reviewed differed in the way they were performed, potentially affecting the results. In addition, the revision is not designed to determine a cause and effect link.
How to explain the apparent association between obesity and cancer?
"I think there is some good evidence that hormones play a role," said Teras. For example, adipose tissue is the largest source of estrogen in women after menopause, and which is considered linked with the type of breast cancer that needs estrogen to grow.
Another possible connection, she said, is inflammation. As people earn more and more weight, they have an increase in inflammation, and this can help tumors grow and spread.
"We are not sure if obesity causes cancer," Stein said, "but can promote it."
Tervas offered more a caveat: "weight loss surgery, like any surgery, is not stripped. The risks and benefits should be heavy with a person's individual physician."
