Background and objective: During the last few decades, prevalence of obesity has risen rapidly worldwide, markedly in children and adolescents. Epidemiologic studies have associated obesity to several cancer types, yet little is known for the effect of early life exposure to obesity on cancer risk in later life, especially in gastric cancer. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the association of body mass index (BMI) of adolescence and the risk of gastric cancer.
Methods: A multicenter case-control study was conducted between 2010 and 2014 in Korea with 1,492 incident gastric cancer cases and 1,492 controls matched by age and sex. The BMI at age 18 was calculated by using weight and height from questionnaire. The association with the risk of gastric cancer was evaluated using odds ratios by logistic regression model adjusted for potential confounding factors.
Results: Compared with BMI 21.75 kg/m(2), higher BMI at age 18 was associated with higher risk of gastric cancer showing a nonlinear, threshold effect. Statistically significant odds ratio was observed in men with BMI higher than 25.3 kg/m(2) (OR 1.13, 95 % CI 1.01-1.27) and in women with BMI 25.3 kg/m(2) and above (OR 1.25, 95 % CI 1.01-1.55).
Conclusion: Similar to some other cancer types, overweight or obese in adolescence was found to be associated with the increased risk of gastric cancer. The results imply for stratified approach of tactics in prevention of gastric cancer in different population.