ISLAMABAD: A woman’s cancer risk appears to increase with her height, a new study shows.
In a study researchers concluded that a woman’s cancer risk increased 13 percent with every 4 inches of height.
“We didn’t find much difference in heavy or lighter women, so it’s a pretty consistent association right across the spectrum,” said senior study author Dr. Thomas Rohan, chair and professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City,
In a 12-year study of 20,928 postmenopausal women, researchers noted that height was linked to breast, colon, endometrium, kidney, ovary, rectum, and thyroid cancers – as well as multiple myeloma and melanoma, Medical Xpress reported.
The taller the women were, the higher their cancer risk. Each 3.95 inch increase in height was associated with a 13 percent increased risk for developing any type of cancer, when researchers compared the heights of all women in the study. For example, a woman who was 5 feet 10 inches tall would have a 13 percent higher risk for cancer than a woman who was approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall.
Despite their findings, Rohan and his fellow researchers hope that taller women don’t lose sleep over the matter. Instead, he hopes researchers will continue to explore the link between height and cancer, as they search for some of the underlying biological mechanisms that may be responsible for the correlation.
