BMI and Mortality Risk: Obesity Paradox in Lung Cancer Treatment
Whether immunotherapy or conventional chemotherapy carries less mortality risk depends on BMI.
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While being overweight increases the risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases, there is a phenomenon known as the obesity paradox where a decreased risk of death has been seen during cancer therapy. However, that paradox might not be the trend for all cancer therapies, an Osaka Metropolitan University team reports in JAMA Network Open, a publication of the American Medical Association.
Led by graduate student Mr. Yasutaka Ihara and Professor Ayumi Shintani of the Graduate School of Medicine’s Department of Medical Statistics, the team used a Japanese administrative claims database of more than 500,000 lung cancer patients and examined the relation between body mass index (BMI) and the risk of mortality during immunotherapy and conventional chemotherapy.
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Subscribe for FREE“Immunotherapy might not always be the optimal treatment method for obese patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, so the use of conventional chemotherapy should also be considered,” Mr. Ihara stated. “In addition to BMI, age, hormones, and gut microbiota have been reported as factors that influence the effectiveness of immunotherapy. Evaluation of whether immunotherapy or conventional chemotherapy improves survival in the presence of these factors is expected to contribute to the development of precision medicine.”
Reference:
Ihara Y, Sawa K, Imai T, et al. Immunotherapy and overall survival among patients
with advanced non-small cell lung cancer and obesity. JAMA Netw Open.
2024. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.25363
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