A new study has revealed an astonishing association between height and increased risk for diagnosis of and mortality from cancer. The findings were published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Using the UK Biobank database, researchers developed genetic predictors of height and applied them in a Mendelian randomisation framework. The analysis included 438,870 individuals of white-British ancestry, and key outcomes evaluated were cancer incidence and cancer mortality by age ~60.
The findings showed that for 1 standard deviation (SD), a 9.27 cm increase in genetically determined standing height was associated with a causal OR (COR) for overall cancer risk of 1.098 (95% CI, 1.065-1.132). The strength of association was weaker in males (COR, 1.055; 95% CI, 1.012-1.100) than in females (COR, 1.139; 95% CI, 1.093-1.186). The association was consistent across most cancer types, except for prostate, stomach, oesophageal and pancreatic cancers. Similarly, for a 1 SD increase in height, the COR for cancer mortality was 1.085 (95% CI, 1.017-1.157), with the association being driven by females.
The precise biological mechanisms underlying the association between height and cancer are not clearly understood; however, it has previously been postulated that the increased risk conferred by height may be attributable to taller individuals having more cells than shorter individuals. The authors call for further studies to elucidate specific causal biological pathways between genetic variants that contribute to height and subsequent cancer risk.
