JEF AKSTObesity is the leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S. Extra body fat not only increases one’s risk of developing cancer, it is also associated with poorer prognosis. In November 2014, researchers published a paper in The Lancet estimating that a half-million new cancer diagnoses each year are related to patients’ weights, and some 10 percent to 15 percent of cancer deaths are attributed to obesity, noted Mikhail Kolonin of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, during a session yesterday (April 2) at the annual meeting for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Washington, DC.
For many years, these phenomena were “considered effects of diet or lifestyle, but as we’ve learned more about the process, it’s become clear that the fat tissue itself is very important,” Kolonin said. His group has found, for example, that stromal cells from the adipose tissue localized to tumors in colorectal and prostate cancers, and depletion of the cells suppressed tumor growth in mice
Details of how body fat can influence cancer biology remain murky, but a key link is inflammation. Andrew Dannenberg of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and colleagues found that presence of crown-like structures (CLSs)—which form as macrophages surround dead or dying adipocyte in the fat tissue, resulting in increased cytokine production and increased lipolysis—was higher in the breasts of ...
