Weight Loss and Cancer Risk Reduction

Both obesity and cancer are significant public health issues in Taiwan, as well as in other developed countries. In particular, obesity has numerous well-known comorbidities including hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. Since the first large study focusing on the association between cancer and obesity was performed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2002, there has been an increasing number of reports of the possible mechanisms underlying this relationship in the literature. We hereby review the current literature to assess the effect of intentional loss of body weight on cancer risk. We found that despite current evidence indicating that body weight loss may decrease the risk of certain malignancies, much of this data arises from patients treated by bariatric surgery. For those patients without ”morbid” obesity, the results of these studies should be cautiously interpreted before more comprehensive clinical guidance is proposed for the general population.