Washington: A new research has found that obesity affects survival rates of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer and shortens the length of time to recurrence of the disease.
It has also found that obesity leads to earlier death from the cancer in women.
The study was conducted by a team of boffins led by Andrew Li, MD at Cedars-Sinai's Women's Cancer Research Institute at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute.
As a part of the study the researchers examined data from 216 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer to identify relationships between obesity, ovarian cancer, tumour biology and outcome.
They found that 29 per cent of the obese women and 10 per cent of normal-weight women had localised disease.
However, obesity was shown to have a significant effect on both the recurrence and mortality of women with advanced disease.
"This study is the first to identify weight as an independent factor in ovarian cancer in disease progression and overall survival, suggesting that there is an element in the fat tissue itself that influences the outcome of this disease in obese women," said Andrew Li.
"While further molecular studies are warranted, our study suggests that fat tissue excretes a hormone or protein that causes ovarian cancer cells to grow more aggressively.," said Li, who is also a physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
"The next steps will be to examine this relationship more closely, and to determine the exact biological mechanisms that influence tumor growth in ovarian cancer," he added.
Ovarian cancer, one of the most lethal cancers, affects almost one in 60 women. Most will be diagnosed with advanced disease, and 70 per cent will die within five years.
The study is published online in the American Cancer Society's journal Cancer.
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