According to a new study, teenage boys are at a higher risk among the population for developing bowel cancer.
The researchers of the study followed close to 240,000 Swedish men for a long stint of 35 years in order to accurately arrive at their findings, according to BBC News.
The results published revealed that overweight male teenagers had a double risk of developing bowel cancer which is the third most common cancer in the world affecting 1.4 million new people each year. To confirm the findings, the World Cancer Research Fund stated that the link found was very strong.
The males in the testing were all between the ages of 16 and 20 when it began 35 years ago. At that time, only 6.5% were overweight with only 1% of them being obese. During the study, there were 855 cases of colorectal cancer. Through the study, the researchers found that not all of the weights were affected equally though.
The participants that were obese were 2.38 times more likely to develop a bowel tumor. The leader of the study, Orebro University Hospital in Sweden and Harvard University said: “Late adolescence marks the transition from childhood to adulthood and is a period of accelerated growth, especially among men, thus this period may represent a critical window.”
They also added: “It is important that we understand the role of exposures in childhood and adolescence in the development of colorectal cancer. In fact, the strong association observed between adolescent obesity and early-to-mid-life colorectal cancer, coupled with the increasing prevalence of adolescent obesity, may shed light on the increase in colorectal cancer incidence among young adults.”
The World Cancer Research Fund confirmed that the connection the study found was correct and that obesity was a huge risk factor for bowel cancer. Rachel Thompson from the fund commented:
“This finding is interesting because it gives an indication that bowel cancer risk might be affected by our lifestyle habits throughout the life course.”
She also added, “In some ways, research into the relationship between factors like obesity and cancer risk is still in its infancy. It will be interesting to see if further research emerges in the future to back up the apparent relationship between body fatness in youth and later-life cancer risk.”
