Abstract
Breast (BCa) and prostate (PrCa) cancer are the first and second most common types of cancer in women and men, respectively. We aimed to explore the causal effect of adiposity on BCa and PrCa risk in the UK Biobank and published data. We used Mendelian randomisation (MR) to assess the causal effect of body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BFP), waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC), and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) on BCa and PrCa risk. We found that increased BMI, WC and HC decreased the risk of breast cancer (OR 0.70 per 5.14 kg/m2 [0.59–0.85, p = 2.1 × 10–4], 0.76 per 12.49 cm [60–0.97, p = 0.028] and 0.73 per 10.31 cm [0.59–0.90, p = 3.7 × 10–3], respectively) and increased WC and BMI decreased the risk of prostate cancer (0.68 per 11.32 cm [0.50–0.91, p = 0.01] and 0.76 per 10.23 kg/m2 [0.61–0.95, p = 0.015], respectively) in UK Biobank participants. We confirmed our results with a two-sample-MR of published data. In conclusion, our results suggest a protective effect of adiposity on the risk of BCa and PrCa highlighting the need to re-evaluate the role of adiposity as cancer risk factor.
Highlights
Breast and prostate cancer are the most common and second most common types of cancer diagnosed worldwide in men and women, respectively[1]
We aim to explore the causal effect of adiposity on breast and prostate cancer risk in the UK Biobank (UKB), a large prospective cohort study, and published data[13,14,15,16]
In our sample, each of the adiposity measures are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer but, with the exception of HC, are associated with a decreased risk of prostate cancer (Fig. 1 & Supplementary Table S4)
Summary
Breast and prostate cancer are the most common and second most common types of cancer diagnosed worldwide in men and women, respectively[1]. Persistent organic pollutant (POP) concentrations increase by 2–4% per kg of weight loss and remain elevated for up to 12 months after a weight loss intervention[12] This may be one of the reasons behind the present inconsistency in the findings between BMI and breast and prostate cancer risk. We aim to explore the causal effect of adiposity on breast and prostate cancer risk in the UK Biobank (UKB), a large prospective cohort study, and published data[13,14,15,16]. We aim to use the rich phenotype data collected as part of the UKB study to identify variables, including chemical exposure, that may explain the observed relationship between adiposity and breast and prostate cancer risk
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