Heaviness in Youth Ups Threat of Liver Cancer:
A
warning for parents of children considered obese. Obesity in childhood has been
shown to lead to a higher risk of liver cancer as adults according to a recent
study presented at a conference in 2012.
Liver
cancer, the kind that starts in the cells of the liver, not that has spread to
the liver from another site, is the third most common cancer the world over.
What's worse, this form of cancer will kill nearly all patients who have it
within the first year. Only 10-20% of such cancers can be removed fully with
surgery, chemotherapy and radiation may prove helpful, however most patients
also have diseases that make these treatments harder to manage.
If
that picture weren't bleak enough, we also know that childhood obesity, like
adult measurements, has risen dramatically over the last 30 years. The
percentage of U.S. children aged 6 to 11 years considered obese was nearly 20%
in 2008, while adolescent obesity stands at 18% for the same year.
To
conduct the latest work on childhood obesity and liver cancer, the team of
researchers looked at birth weight and BMI at school age of over 165,000 boys
and 160,000 girls in Denmark who were born between the years 1930 and 1989. Of
these subjects, 252 were later diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)
the most common type of cancer of the liver in adults.
After
examining the data, the study team calculated that by age 7 the chance of
developing liver cancer as an adult went up by 12% for every 1 BMI point
increase. Upon entering the teen years, the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma
went up to 25% with each single BMI point. As BMI went up as a child grew, so
too did the chance of being diagnosed with liver cancer as an adult. The risk
was the same across genders and for all ages.
Other
things known to influence liver cancer risk include alcoholism or an infection
by either hepatitis B or C or another liver disease. Yet the study results
didn't change when subjects who had these risk factors were taken out of the
mix. This suggests that being obese in childhood was the major risk in terms of
developing hepatocellular carcinoma.
Childhood
obesity is known to lead to a multitude of harmful metabolic conditions, heart
disease and type 2 diabetes, including fatty liver disease that might later
bring liver cancer warns experts. This is why they maintain that it is so
important to keep a child's BMI in the healthy range during these years.
Losing
that weight isn't any easier for kids than it is for adults, but considering
the risks, a healthy lifestyle should be modeled for your children. Eating a
well balanced; though not entirely treat free diet is a smart start. As is
being more active, not just once in a while, but on a regular basis to prevent
or turn around obesity in childhood.
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