Obesity Can Put You At Risk For Liver Cancer, Type-2 Diabetes Doubles The Risk

Being overweight or obese has a lot of detrimental effects on your health. A recent study shows that having a high body mass index (BMI) and type 2 diabetes can increase your chances of developing liver cancer.

The study's co-author Peter Campbell said, "We found that each of these three factors was associated, robustly, with liver cancer risk." Campbell is the strategic director of digestive system cancer research at the American Cancer Society. According to Web MD, liver cancer rates have approximately increased three times in the United States since the mid-1970s, "and the prognosis for patients diagnosed with this type of cancer is especially grim," Campbell said.

Campbell and his colleagues analyzed data on 1.57 million adults from 14 U.S. studies to identify the connection between obesity and type-2 diabetes and liver cancer. According to the study, none of the participants were diagnosed with cancer when the study began. Health Day reported that as time pass, 6.5 percent of the study's subjects were diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, which is a known obesity-related disease. The study found that over 2,100 participants developed liver cancer.

After comparing liver cancer diagnosis among those who were obese and had diabetes against those who were obese but didn't have diabetes, the researchers discovered that people with type 2 diabetes were 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with liver cancer. The findings, published in the journal, Cancer Research, were the same even after accounting for other risk factors, such as drinking, smoking, and race.

The study explained that as the participants' BMI, a calculation based on height and weight, increased, their chances of being diagnosed with cancer also increase. The researchers found an 8 percent increase in risk for liver cancer for every extra 2 inches added to the waist circumference, reported US News. "This adds substantial support to liver cancer being on the list of obesity-associated cancers," Campbell said in a journal news release. "This is yet another reason to maintain a body weight in the 'normal' range for your height."

The researchers also added that in the US, about eight adults out of 100,000 will have liver cancer in a specific year. Meanwhile, although the study found a connection between obesity and liver cancer, it does not reveal a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Nevertheless, the findings support previous studies claiming that obesity and diabetes may be contributing factors to the significant rise in liver cancer in recent years, the researchers said.

"Liver cancer isn't simply related to excess alcohol intake and viral hepatitis infection," Campbell said. "For adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus, their risk of developing liver cancer is more than doubled relative to those who do not have type 2 diabetes mellitus, according to this study," he added.

Furthermore, basing from a public health's point of view, these study results are important because obesity and diabetes are so common, said study co-author Katherine McGlynn, a senior investigator at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. "While some other well-described risk factors, such as hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus, are associated with increased risks of liver cancer, these factors are much less common than are obesity and diabetes," McGlynn said.