Team Blitz India
THE UAE has types of cancer that are often linked to obesity more than other countries in the world, a study has revealed.
The authors of the research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health, said a renewed focus on combating obesity in the Gulf could reduce the burden of cancers linked to being overweight.
Oesophageal cancer is having three times the impact in the country compared with the global average, while colon/rectal cancer and liver cancer also develop much more frequently.
The authors looked at the number of years of healthy life lost to disability, illness or death as a result of different cancers. Totals were adjusted for the population’s age structure to give the age-standardised, disability-adjusted life years rate (ASDR).
Oesophageal cancer
The study reported that ASDR of oesophageal cancer in the UAE is 85.07 for every 100,000 people. For colon/rectal cancer, the ASDR is 66.18 for every 100,000, well over double the average.
Another cancer often linked to obesity, liver cancer, has an ASDR of 35.49 for every 100,000 in the UAE, close to double the global average of 19.24 for every 100,000. High rates for cancers linked to obesity were also found for other Gulf countries.
“One possible explanation for this increase is the rising rate of obesity in GCC countries, influenced by westernisation,” Dr Rbab Bajunaid of King Abdullah International Medical Research Centre in Jeddah and the study’s corresponding author, told The National. “Changes in dietary habits are characterised by the increased consumption of processed and high-fat foods.”
The growth in the frequency of obesity in the UAE and other Gulf countries in recent decades, attributed to changes in diet and a lack of physical activity, has also been linked to high rates of type 2 diabetes. Some other parts of the world where rates of obesity have increased, including the Gulf, experience high rates of cancers associated with obesity.
Alcohol consumption
For example, deaths from liver cancer have more than tripled in the UK since the early 1970s, something that the British Liver Trust has said is largely the result of alcohol consumption and obesity.
