Height and site-specific cancer risk: A cohort study of a korean adult population.
Sung, Joohon;
Song, Yun-Mi;
Lawlor, Debbie A;
Smith, George Davey;
Ebrahim, Shah;
(2009)
Height and site-specific cancer risk: A cohort study of a korean adult population.
American journal of epidemiology, 170 (1).
pp. 53-64.
ISSN 0002-9262
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwp088
Permanent Identifier
Use this Digital Object Identifier when citing or linking to this resource.
To evaluate the association between height and risk of cancer in an East Asian, middle-income population, the authors followed up a cohort of 788,789 Koreans (449,214 men and 339,575 women) aged 40-64 years for cancer incidence between 1994 and 2003. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to evaluate the association. Each 5-cm increment in height was associated with 5% and 7% higher risk of all-sites cancer in men and women, respectively, after adjustment for age, body mass index, and behavioral and socioeconomic factors. When the associations were evaluated for site-specific cancers, a positive association was observed for cancer of the colon and thyroid in both men and women. Among gender-specific cancers, prostate cancer was positively associated with height in men. In women, there was a positive association between height and cancers of the breast and ovary, which did not change even after additional adjustment for reproductive factors. Although more clarification is needed for some site-specific cancers, the same positive association of height with cancer in a middle-income Korean population as found in high-income Western populations supports the influence of early life environment on cancer development in adulthood.