A Focus on Adipose (Fat) Tissue

Obesity is on the rise globally. Besides increasing rates of heart disease, diabetes and metabolic dysfunction, this trend puts people at greater risk of both getting cancer and dying from it. As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology:

“Obesity is associated with worsened prognosis after cancer diagnosis and also negatively affects the delivery of systemic therapy, contributes to morbidity of cancer treatment, and may raise the risk of second malignancies and comorbidities.”

Within the scientific and medical communities, there’s growing consensus that the key factors driving tumor growth and metastasis are:

• Excess visceral adipose tissue, which releases a variety of hormones and adipokines (signaling molecules from fat cells) that are stimulative to cancer
• Chronic, low-grade inflammation, which is associated with excess visceral fat and promotes insulin resistance
• Hyperinsulinemia, which is a known promoter of cancer progression, metastasis and mortality – even if the patient presents with normal glucose levels.

Metabolically Sensitive Tumors

Research has shown a link between metabolic dysfunction and worse outcomes for at least 10 types of cancer:

Posted on AACR website Jan 2018 by Karen Honey, PhD

These “metabolically sensitive” tumors constitute a significant percentage of all cancer cases in the United States, yet receive no special treatment. Furthermore, these patients have higher cancer mortality rates than their metabolically normal counterparts — as many as 84,000 cancer diagnoses each year are attributed to obesity, and overweight and obesity are implicated in 15% to 20% of total cancer-related deaths.

With an aging population and increasing obesity rates, the metabo-oncology problem is becoming more and more urgent. It’s time for action.