Extra weight bad for breast cancer patients

Recent studies have shown that women who suffer from breast cancer and are carrying excess weight are likely to succumb to the disease faster. American researchers reported on Friday that the preponderance of fat tissue is connected to a more destructive form of cancer.

It was noticed that a particular virulent form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer, was observed in 45% of obese patients, as against 30% of overweight patients and only 15% of patients of normal weight.

According to Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who headed the study, the aggressiveness of the disease is directly proportional to the weight of a patient. The researches believe that it is fat tissue that causes greater swelling, the consequence of which is a more hostile disease.

Dr. Cristofanilli and his team explained in the Clinical Cancer Research journal that 606 women with active breast cancer had been examined, and categorized as per BMI or body mass index, a measure of obesity. Those with normal weight have BMIs less than 25, overweight people have BMIs between 25 and 29. Obesity is characterized by a BMI of more than 30.

When the patients were studied again after five years, 67.4% of the normal weight women were still surviving, but only 56.8% of obese women and 56.3% of overweight women had made it that far.

After ten years, over 56% of those with normal weight had survived 10 years, as against 42.7% of obese women and 41.8% of overweight women.

The doctor said that obesity was more than merely looking fat, or struggling with the excess weight being carried around. Extra weight needs attention, he maintains.

Earlier research has revealed that obesity is linked with susceptibility to many kinds of cancer. The Lancet, a British medical reported that obesity may double the chances of leukemia, multiple myeloma and thyroid, colon and kidney cancers. The hormones in the fat cells are responsible for adding momentum to the spread of cancer.