Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANCER
Volume 149, Issue 7, Pages 1421-1425Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ijc.33691
Keywords
cancer; childhood obesity; gene; Mendelian randomization
Categories
Funding
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2020T130583]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31900835]
- Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province of China [202300410169]
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A study using Mendelian randomization found a significant increase in the risk of pancreatic and esophageal cancer in adults due to childhood obesity, while a negative correlation was observed with throat and breast cancer risk. Maintaining a healthy weight during childhood and adolescence should be emphasized to prevent future cancer risks.
In observational studies of children and adolescents, higher body weight has been associated with distinct disease outcomes, including cancer, in adulthood. Therefore, we performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study to evaluate the causal effect of childhood obesity on long-term cancer risk. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with higher childhood body mass index (BMI) from large-scale genome-wide association studies were used as genetic instruments. Summary-level data for 24 site-specific cancers were obtained from UK Biobank. We found that a 1-SD increase in childhood BMI (kg/m(2)) was significantly associated with a 60% increase in risk of pancreatic cancer (odds ratio [OR]: 1.60; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.12-2.28; P < 0.01) and a 47% increase in risk of esophageal cancer (OR: 1.47; 95% CI: 1.09-1.97; P < 0.01) in adults. In contrast, there was an inverse association of genetic predisposition to childhood obesity with throat (OR: 0.46; 95% CI: 0.27-0.79; P < 0.01) and breast cancer (OR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.64-0.94; P < 0.01) in adult life. For the other 20 cancers studied, no statistically significant association was observed. Our MR analyses found causal effects of childhood obesity on several cancers. Maintaining a healthy weight should be emphasized during childhood and adolescence to prevent cancer risk later in life.
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