Taller women are at an increased risk of cancer compared to shorter ones, with every 10 extra centimetres of height adding 16 per cent to the risk.
And there is no reason to assume that this finding does not apply to men – it is just that the current result was based on data drawn from a study that tracked 1.3 million women over a 10 year period.
These results build on previous studies showing that there might be a link between cancer and height, and this study shows that the link holds across different lifestyles and backgrounds.
The overall increase in height that has occurred over the last 150 years may provide some explanation for the increase in cancer rates seen in the same period.
Scientists from the University of Oxford looked at the association between height and other factors and cancer incidence in the ‘Million Women Study’. Over 10 years nearly 100,000 cases of cancer were identified.
Cancer cells
For women of average height, around 5ft 4in, there were around 850 cancers per 100,000 women per year. This figure increased to 1,000 cancers per 100,000 women per year for women around 5ft 9in tall, and fell to 750 cancers per 100,000 women per year for those around 5ft in height.
The risk of many different types of cancer was also found to increase with height including cancers of the breast, ovary, womb, bowel, leukaemia and malignant melanoma.
Study author Dr Jane Green said: “We showed that the link between greater height and increased total cancer risk is similar across many different populations from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North America.”
Although there is no explanation as to why increased height is linked to higher cancer rates, Dr Green said: “The link between height and cancer risk seems to be common to many different types of cancer and in different people; suggesting that there may be a basic common mechanism, perhaps acting early in peoples’ lives, when they are growing.”
“Of course people cannot change their height. Being taller has been linked to a lower risk of other conditions, such as heart disease.
“The importance of our findings is that they may help us to understand how cancers develop.”
The results of the study are published online in The Lancet Oncology.
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A study has indicated that women whose breasts appear dense on mammograms are at a higher risk of breast cancer and their tumours are more likely to have certain aggressive characteristics than women with less dense breasts.
Mammographic breast density–a reflection of the proportions of fat, connective tissue, and epithelial tissue in the breast–is a well-established risk factor for breast cancer.
Women with higher amounts of epithelial and stromal tissue have higher density and higher risk. However, it has not been clear whether breast density was associated with specific tumour characteristics and tumour type.
To explore this issue, Rulla M. Tamimi, Sc.D., at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and colleagues, compared breast density in 1,042 postmenopausal women with breast cancer and 1,794 matched control subjects.
They found that the risk of breast cancer increased progressively with increasing breast density.
The associations were stronger for larger tumours than for smaller tumours; for high-grade than for low-grade tutors; and for estrogen receptor-negative than for estrogen receptor-positive tumours.
The link between density and breast cancer also appeared to be stronger for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) than for invasive tumours.
The authors concluded that higher mammographic density is associated with more aggressive tumour characteristics and also with DCIS.
“Our results suggest that breast density influences the risk of breast cancer subtypes by potentially different mechanisms,” they wrote.
“Further studies are warranted to explain underlying biological processes and elucidate the possible pathways from high breast density to the specific subtypes of breast carcinoma,” they added.
The study has been published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that high-dose vitamin D relieves joint and muscle pain for many breast cancer patients taking estrogen-lowering drugs.
The drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors, are commonly prescribed to shrink breast tumours fuelled by the hormone estrogen and help prevent cancer recurrence. They are less toxic than chemotherapy, but for many patients, the drugs may cause severe musculoskeletal discomfort, including pain and stiffness in the hands, wrists, knees, hips, lower back, shoulders and feet.
“About half of patients can experience these symptoms. We don’t know exactly why the pain occurs, but it can be very debilitating — to the point that patients decide to stop taking aromatase inhibitors,” said Antonella L. Rastelli, MD, assistant professor of medicine and first author of the study.
It was Rastelli’s colleague, Marie E. Taylor, assistant professor of radiation oncology, who first noticed that patients on aromatase inhibitors who experienced this pain found some relief from high doses of vitamin D.
So Rastelli’s group recruited 60 patients who reported pain and discomfort associated with anastrozole, one of three FDA-approved aromatase inhibitors. The patients they studied also had low vitamin D levels. Half the group was randomly assigned to receive the recommended daily dose of vitamin D (400 international units) plus a 50,000-unit vitamin D capsule once a week.
The results showed that the patients receiving high-dose vitamin D every week reported significantly less musculoskeletal pain and also were less likely to experience pain that interfered with daily living.
“High-dose vitamin D seems to be really effective in reducing the musculoskeletal pain caused by aromatase inhibitors,” said Rastelli.
“Patients who get the vitamin D weekly feel better because their pain is reduced and sometimes goes away completely. This makes the drugs much more tolerable. Millions of women worldwide take aromatase inhibitor therapy, and we may have another ‘tool’ to help them remain on it longer,” added Rastelli.
The study has been published online in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
The likelihood of developing the disease rises 16 per cent for every extra four inches in height among women – and a similar pattern is also seen in men.
Although previous research has linked height with particular tumours – such as breast in women and testicular in men – new findings show the phenomenon is not restricted to any types of the disease.
Dr Jane Green, who led the research, said: “The fact that the link between height and cancer risk seems to be common to many different types of cancer in different people suggests there may be a basic common mechanism, perhaps acting early in peoples’ lives, when they are growing.
“Of course people cannot change their height. And being taller has actually been linked to a lower risk of other conditions, such as heart disease.”
Hormone levels related to childhood growth, and in turn to cancer risk in later life, could be behind the phenomenon.
It was also suggested the link could simply be down to the fact that taller people have more cells in their bodies, and so a greater chance of developing cancerous cell changes.
Dr Green said: “One possible reason is fairly obvious – tall people have more cells so there is a greater chance that one of them could mutate.
“But being tall is also related to hormonal growth factors which leads to a higher turnover of cells and this is an interesting possibility.
“There is nothing we can do about our height but these findings may open the door to discovering how some cancers may develop.”
She went on: “Although we carried out our study in women when we compared the results to previous ones involving both sexes we found a similar link between cancer and height in men.
“So there is no gender bias and the association seems to apply to a range of cancers – it’s just most studies have been carried out on the more common ones like breast and colorectal.”
Dr Green and colleagues, whose findings are published online in The Lancet Oncology, said previous studies have shown a link between height and cancer risk but their’s extends the findings to more cancers and for women with differing lifestyles and economic backgrounds.
The results also suggest increases in the height of populations over the course of the 20th century might explain some of the changes in cancer incidence over time.
The height of European adults increased by about 1cm (0.39 inches) per decade during the twentieth century, and the study suggests that this may explain around 10-15 per cent of the rise in cancer cases seen over this period.
The researchers assessed the association between height and cancer among 97,000 cases identified from the Million Women Study which included 1.3 million middle-aged women in the UK enrolled between 1996 and 2001.
During an average follow-up time of about ten years the largest study of its kind found the risk rose in tandem with height and included at least ten types of the disease including breast, skin, bowel, leukaemia and ovarian – a wider range than initially thought.
The researchers who looked at women with heights ranging from under 155cm (5ft 1in) to 175cm (5ft 9in) and taller then compared their results with those from ten previous studies involving both men and women and found they were strikingly similar.
Dr Green said: “We showed the link between greater height and increased total cancer risk is similar across many different populations from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North America.”
Dr Andrew Renehan, of Manchester University, who reviewed the study for the journal, said: “In the future, researchers need to explore the predictive capacities of direct measures of nutrition, psychosocial stress and illness during childhood, rather than final adult height.”
Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: “Tall people need not be alarmed by these results.
“Most people are not a lot taller (or shorter) than average, and their height will only have a small effect on their individual cancer risk.
“This study confirms the link between height and cancer paving the way for studies to help us understand why this is so.
“On average, people in the UK have a more than one in three chance of developing cancer in their lifetime. So it’s important that everyone is aware of what is normal for their body and go see their doctor as quickly as possible if they notice any unusual changes.
“And while we can’t control our height, there are many lifestyle choices people can make that we know have a greater impact on reducing the risk of cancer such as not smoking, moderating alcohol, keeping a healthy weight and being physically active.”