Obesity in teenagers Linked to Bowel Cancer Risk

Teenagers who are obese or overweight are twice as likely to develop bowel cancer symptoms later in life according to a new study.

Bowel cancer for some time has been linked with obesity and is currently also the fourth most common type of cancer in the UK.

Through the study, the researchers observed that teenagers with Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 25 were at least 2.08 times more likely to contract the disease.

Scientists from the US went through the records of more than 240,000 men who had to undergo a compulsory conscription assessment for the Swedish military between 1952 and 1956. At the time, these men were in their late teens.

It was discovered that 81 percent of the men were categorized as normal weight while 1.5 percent were considered upper overweight with a BMI of 27.5 to 30. In addition to that 1 percent of the participants were deemed to be obese.

Thirty five years later, 885 men had been diagnosed with bowel cancer and scientists found that those who belonged to the upper overweight group, were 2.08 times more likely to contract cancer. People who were categorized as obese were 2.38 times likely to contract the disease.

Elizabeth Kantor from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts was the lead author of the study and the reports were published in the BMJ journal Gut.