Body Mass Index
(BMI) is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in
meters. It categorizes that person as underweight, normal
weight, overweight, or obese based on the
obtained value.
With the
development of society, the prevalence of obesity has been rapidly increasing,
which is a generally recognized risk factor for metabolic syndrome, type II
diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and several cancers including breast
cancer, so it’s necessary to investigate the relationship between the body mass
index (BMI) and different diseases.
In this study, the
authors evaluated the association between the body mass index (BMI) of breast
cancer patients and non-cancer females of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
The data of weight, height and age was obtained from the patient records of 706
newly diagnosed breast cancer patients and of 20,872 non-cancer female patients
who consulted the two largest hospitals in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia
between 2006 and 2012. Factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to
assess the association between the BMI, age and breast cancer status. And the
study results showed that the BMI significantly increased with age, and that
the percentage of obese women was high in all examined age groups. And the mean
BMI of the non-cancer females was 29.4 and the percentage of obese patients of
the different age groups ranged from 23.9% to 66.5%. The ANOVA revealed that
breast cancer patients older than 50 years old had a significantly lower BMI
compared to their non-cancer counterparts (p = 0.01).
In conclusion, the
obtained data in this study confirmed the high BMI of the Saudi Arabian female
population. And the reason for its finding of a lower BMI of postmenopausal
breast cancer patients compared to their non-cancer counterparts was unclear. Besides,
it’s recommended that future studies are warranted to assess the impact of
possible confounding factors on the association between obesity and breast
cancer risk.
Image by Danilo Acosta, from
Flickr-cc.
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