Affiliations 

  • 1 International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France
  • 2 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 3 CESP, Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Sud, Villejuif, France
  • 4 Department of Epidemiology, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam, Rehbruecke, Germany
  • 5 Department of Molecular Epidemiology, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam, Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany
  • 6 Cancer Risk Factors and Lifestyle Epidemiology Unit, Institute for Cancer Research, Prevention and Clinical Network - ISPRO, Florence, Italy
  • 7 Epidemiology and Prevention Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano,Via Venezian, Milan, Italy
  • 8 Unit of Cancer Epidemiology, Città della Salute e della Scienza University-Hospital and Center for Cancer Prevention (CPO), Turin, Italy
  • 9 AOU Federico II, Naples, Italy
  • 10 Division of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
  • 11 Unit of Nutrition and Cancer, Cancer Epidemiology Research Program, Catalan Institute of Oncology- IDIBELL, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
  • 12 CIBER Epidemiology and Public Health CIBERESP, Madrid, Spain
  • 13 Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden
  • 14 Department of Community Medicine, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
  • 15 Department of Epidemiology, Julius Center Research Program Cancer, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • 16 Diet, Genes and Environment, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, København, Denmark
  • 17 Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  • 18 Cancer Registry and Histopathology Department, Azienda Sanitaria Provinciale (ASP), Ragusa, Italy
  • 19 Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain
  • 20 Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece
  • 21 Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Sustainable Health, Umeå University, Umea, Sweden
Int J Cancer, 2020 Aug 01;147(3):648-661.
PMID: 31652358 DOI: 10.1002/ijc.32753

Abstract

Emerging evidence suggests that a metabolic profile associated with obesity may be a more relevant risk factor for some cancers than adiposity per se. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is an indicator of overall body metabolism and may be a proxy for the impact of a specific metabolic profile on cancer risk. Therefore, we investigated the association of predicted BMR with incidence of 13 obesity-related cancers in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). BMR at baseline was calculated using the WHO/FAO/UNU equations and the relationships between BMR and cancer risk were investigated using multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models. A total of 141,295 men and 317,613 women, with a mean follow-up of 14 years were included in the analysis. Overall, higher BMR was associated with a greater risk for most cancers that have been linked with obesity. However, among normal weight participants, higher BMR was associated with elevated risks of esophageal adenocarcinoma (hazard ratio per 1-standard deviation change in BMR [HR1-SD ]: 2.46; 95% CI 1.20; 5.03) and distal colon cancer (HR1-SD : 1.33; 95% CI 1.001; 1.77) among men and with proximal colon (HR1-SD : 1.16; 95% CI 1.01; 1.35), pancreatic (HR1-SD : 1.37; 95% CI 1.13; 1.66), thyroid (HR1-SD : 1.65; 95% CI 1.33; 2.05), postmenopausal breast (HR1-SD : 1.17; 95% CI 1.11; 1.22) and endometrial (HR1-SD : 1.20; 95% CI 1.03; 1.40) cancers in women. These results indicate that higher BMR may be an indicator of a metabolic phenotype associated with risk of certain cancer types, and may be a useful predictor of cancer risk independent of body fatness.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.