A link between prostate cancer and obesity or being overweight seems to be confirmed according to several studies. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, obesity and being overweight are associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer. If you are obese or overweight, it is more likely that prostate cancer will be diagnosed at a more advanced stage. A significant amount of body fat is also linked to a higher risk of high-grade prostate cancer, which means a more aggressive cancer.

Medically reviewed by Marie-Lyssa Lafontaine, medical student, urology axis, University of Montreal, on 03/02/2023

What do the studies say?

According to a study led by Professor Marie-Élise Parent of the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS) and published in the journal Cancer Causes & Control in April 2021, researchers found that men with a higher waist circumference had a higher risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer.

Multiple studies over time have shown that obesity appears to increase the risk of developing cancer. However, it is specifically the accumulation of abdominal fat that is associated with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

According to Professor Marie-Élise Parent, who supervised the work of PhD candidate Éric Vallières, “The prostate being an organ that is hormone-dependent, increased obesity could reduce the level of testosterone and bring about chronic inflammation, which could promote more aggressive tumors.”

Large-scale study covering a total of about 2.5 million cases

Another study, this time published in the journal BMC Medicine in May 2022, established that the risk of dying from prostate cancer was indeed linked to being overweight. Moreover, it appears that the degree of severity of obesity is associated with higher mortality rates.

Thus, their conclusions confirm their assumptions: the more overweight you are, the higher the risk of dying from prostate cancer. On the other hand, it refutes one of the hypotheses that existed until now to explain this link, namely that abdominal fat would be a risk factor.

But if the study rejects this explanation, it does not provide another. Indeed, the main author of the study, epidemiologist Aurora Perez-Cornago, was not able to explain precisely why overweight men die more from prostate cancer.

Is it possible that being overweight leads to the production of molecules by the body that would thus favor this type of cancer? This is a hypothesis that researchers will investigate, without being certain at the moment.

That said, one thing is certain. Obesity and being overweight are the root causes of multiple health problems and chronic diseases such as several cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc.

To be continued…

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