Obesity may cause cancer simply because larger organs have more cells

By Michael Le Page

Pancreatic cancer cells

ANNE WESTON, EM STP, THE FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

CT scans of 750 individuals show that people who are obese have larger organs and thus more cells. This could explain why people who are obese have a higher risk of many kinds of cancers.

“While obesity is a complex disease that may affect cancer risk in several other ways, the increase in the size of an organ, and in the number of its cells, must increase the risk of cancer in that organ,” states the team, which is led by Cristian Tomasetti at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. …