Obesity at the time of cancer diagnosis in children may affect survival rates, according to a study released on Monday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that in 2022, over 390 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 years were overweight, including 160 million living with obesity. Obesity is known to increase the risk of several non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.
“Our study highlights the negative impact of obesity among all types of childhood cancers. It provides the rationale to evaluate different strategies to mitigate the adverse risk of obesity on cancer outcomes in future trials,” said Thai Hoa Tran, from the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine in Montreal, Canada.
The study was a retrospective analysis of 11,291 children newly diagnosed with cancer between 2001 and 2020 across Canada. The children, aged 2 to 18 years, were assessed for obesity status at the time of diagnosis. It was found that 10.5 per cent of these children were obese when diagnosed.
The study revealed that children with obesity at diagnosis had lower rates of 5-year event-free survival (77.5 per cent compared to 79.6 per cent for non-obese patients) and overall survival (83.0 per cent compared to 85.9 per cent for non-obese patients). After adjusting for various factors, including age, sex, ethnicity, neighbourhood income quintile, treatment era, and cancer categories, the research team discovered that obesity at diagnosis was linked to a 16 per cent increase in the risk of relapse. Furthermore, the risk of death increased by 29 per cent for those with obesity.
The negative impact of obesity on prognosis was especially noticeable in children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and brain tumours. Tran added, “This study also reinforces the urgent need to reduce the epidemic of childhood obesity as it can result in significant health consequences.”
The findings were published in the journal Cancer.
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