Diabetes and obesity to blame for 21,000 cancer cases in UK every year, experts warn

ALMOST 21,000 cases of cancer a year in the UK are caused because patients have diabetes or are too fat, a major study has found.

The lifestyle factors are responsible for more than one in 20 incidences of the disease, or 6.4 per cent, experts say.

They put the global toll at 792,600 cases a year, or 5.6 per cent of all diagnoses.

But that’s expected to rocket to 30 per cent in women and 20 per cent in men by 2035 if rates of diabetes and obesity continue to rise.

Health campaigners say the findings highlight the importance of exercise and good diet and the need for doctors to screen at-risk patients.

It is the first time scientists have quantified the number of cancers worldwide caused by these two factors.

Twice as many cancers were caused by being overweight than by all types of diabetes. And these cancers were twice as common in women as men.

It is thought diabetes and excess fat disrupt the body’s hormones and cause inflammation, both of which can fuel cancer growth.

Boffins at Imperial College London analysed data on 12 types of cancer, body mass index and diabetes from 175 countries in 2012.

Diabetes and high BMI was most likely to cause liver or bowel cancer in men and breast cancer or womb cancer in women.

Around 4million people in the UK are thought to have diabetes, most of them type-2, which is linked to being overweight.

And more than six in ten British adults are overweight or obese.

Some 5.6 per cent of new cancer cases in the UK, around 18,000, were attributable to high BMI and 1.5 per cent, or 4,800, to diabetes.

The total number of obesity and diabetes-related cases in the UK is estimated at 20,800, after accounting for the fact that some patients are both fat and diabetic.

Study leader Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard said: “A substantial number of cancer cases are attributable to diabetes and high BMI.

“As the prevalence of these cancer risk factors increases, clinical and public health efforts should focus on identifying optimal preventive and screening measures for whole populations and individual patients.

“These projections are particularly alarming when considering the high and increasing cost of cancer and metabolic diseases.”

The findings are published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.