Childhood Obesity and 'The Ticking Cancer Timebomb'

30 November -0001

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The results of a study of health in Scotland have revealed worrying evidence that there is a link between childhood obesity and an increased risk of cancer in adulthood.

The research carried out by scientists at Bristol University has discovered that the most overweight children had at a far higher risk developing pancreatic, bladder, lung, respiratory tract and mouth cancers in later life.

The study has further revealed that older children were more likely to develop the full range of cancers, which include colorectal, breast and prostate tumours, as adults.

The new studies have differed from previous ones which concentrated on obese adults and whether they are at greater risk of developing cancer.

The research by Bristol University has been hailed by obesity and cancer specialists as being the breakthrough to answering whether the disease can be triggered by lifestyle choices made much earlier in childhood.

In the UK it is considered to be important with obesity levels among British children increasing at such a high level revealing the potential health issues that are being stored up for children in later life.

Scotland has the fattest youngsters in the UK, more than one in five pre-school children are now classed as overweight, with one in five 12-year-olds are clinically obese.

The research paper, to be published in the International Journal of Cancer later this year, concludes: If the cancer risk among today’s young people mimics that of previous generations, our observations suggest that the impact of current childhood obesity on the cancer burden in the second half of this century may be substantial. Efforts to reverse the increasing prevalence of obesity must continue to be supported.

The results of the study have taken more than 10 years to compile, and include the thousands of people who took part in the groundbreaking Carnegie study that took place between 1937 and 1939.

These participants although now pensioners were at the time of the tests aged between 2 and 14 years old using the NHS Central Register they determined who had died or suffered ill health.

The initial survey, Britain’s first national survey on diet and health, was the brainchild of pioneering Scottish nutritionist Sir John Boyd Orr, founder of the Rowett Institute.

The research project was the largest study of its kind and was used to formulate Britain’s war-time food rationing system and hailed as a major advance in human nutrition.

Now the pre-war study has give scientists vital clues about the links between childhood diet and susceptibility to cancer in adulthood.

The team from Bristol discovered that children of both sexes who recorded the biggest body mass index scores were more likely to develop cancers. In the research group, those aged eight and over were more likely to develop the full range of cancers.

A Bristol University member of the research team, said there was now a strong picture emerging that the fattest children had a greater risk of developing cancer.

There is now are a growing number of studies showing that more overweight adults have a higher risk of developing cancer, as this is not the only study to indicate the link between childhood obesity and adult cancers.

The unique factor in the Bristol research is that it covers virtually the full life span of a generation covering in excess of 60 years.

A professor on the team though pointed out that children studied in the 1930s were more impoverished and may have suffered “under-nutrition” in terms of energy intake, whereas today’s children were more likely to experience poor- quality nutrition rather than insufficient calorie intake, as a result relatively few children in the original study were overweight, with less than 4% in the fattest BMI category.

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