Influence of obesity-related risk factors in the aetiology of glioma

Journal article

BACKGROUND: Obesity and related factors have been implicated as possible aetiological factors for the development of glioma in epidemiological observation studies. We used genetic markers in a Mendelian randomisation framework to examine whether obesity-related traits influence glioma risk. This methodology reduces bias from confounding and is not affected by reverse causation. METHODS: Genetic instruments were identified for 10 key obesity-related risk factors, and their association with glioma risk was evaluated using data from a genome-wide association study of 12,488 glioma patients and 18,169 controls. The estimated odds ratio of glioma associated with each of the genetically defined obesity-related traits was used to infer evidence for a causal relationship. RESULTS: No convincing association with glioma risk was seen for genetic instruments for body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, lipids, type-2 diabetes, hyperglycaemia or insulin resistance. Similarly, we found no evidence to support a relationship between obesity-related traits with subtypes of glioma-glioblastoma (GBM) or non-GBM tumours. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides no evidence to implicate obesity-related factors as causes of glioma

Authors: Disney-Hogg, L; Sud, A; Law, PJ; Cornish, AJ; Kinnersley, B

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Nature [academic journals on nature.com]
• Journal: British Journal of Cancer
• Volume: 118
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 1020-1027
• Publication date: 2018-03-09
• DOI: 10.1038/s41416-018-0009-x
• EISSN: 1532-1827
• ISSN: 0007-0920
• Language: English
• Keywords: Risk factor; Cancer research; Medicine; Oncology; Bioinformatics; Pathology; Biology; Etiology; Obesity; Internal medicine; Glioma