Obesity may increase survival rate for kidney cancer

Recently researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida have discovered that what harms you may actually help you: obesity both increases your risk for developing kidney cancer and then may reduce its severity once you have it.

Researchers looked at 970 patients with the most common form of kidney cancer, clear cell renal carcinoma, and found that the overweight or obese individuals had less aggressive tumors than those who were normal or underweight. Using BMI as the guide for weight parameters, at the 5 year point the survival rate from the cancer was 82 percent for the obese patients, 77 percent for the overweight patients, and only 62 percent for the normal-weight patients. This means, compared to patients with an ideal BMI, the death rate was decreased by 52 percent for the obese patients and 36 percent for the overweight patients.

It is still unclear if these findings are related to the obesity itself, or merely due to the fact that obese individuals are more likely to undergo screenings and/or be diagnosed at an earlier stage in the disease.