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Obesity affects children’s likelihood of survival after a cancer diagnosis
A population-based study shows that among children with cancer, the risk of dying is higher in those who were obese at the time of diagnosis. The results of the study are published online in the journal Cancer.
The retrospective study was based on information from the Cancer in Young People in Canada (CYP-C) database, which includes all children with newly diagnosed cancer aged 2 to 18 years across Canada from 2001 to 2020. Obesity was defined as an age- and sex-adjusted BMI at or above the 95th percentile.
Among 11,291 children with cancer, 10.5% were obese at the time of diagnosis. The researchers evaluated five-year event-free survival (cancer recurrence-free survival) as well as overall survival.
Compared to patients without obesity at the time of initial cancer diagnosis, obese patients had lower five-year event-free survival (77.5% vs. 79.6%) and overall survival (83.0% vs. 85.9%).
After adjusting for factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, regional income quintile, treatment period, and cancer category, obesity at the time of diagnosis was associated with a 16% increased risk of recurrence and a 29% increased risk of death. The negative impact of obesity on prognosis was particularly pronounced in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and brain tumors.
“Our study highlights the negative impact of obesity on all types of pediatric cancers. It provides a rationale for evaluating different strategies to reduce the negative risk of obesity on malignancy outcomes in future studies,” says study co-author Thai Hoa Tran, M.D., of St. Justine University Hospital in Montreal. “It also confirms the urgent need to reduce the epidemic of childhood obesity, as it can lead to significant health consequences.”
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