Dr Emelie Benyi, who led the study, said: ‘Our studies show that taller individuals are more likely to develop cancer but it is unclear so far if they also have a higher risk of dying from cancer or have an increased mortality overall’.
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A further possibility is that taller people have more cells, including stem cells, exposing them to a greater opportunity for mutations leading to malignant transformation.
Skin cancer is most strongly linked to height, with the risk increasing by 30 per cent for each extra 10cm.
Additionally, taller ladies had a 20 % larger danger of creating breast most cancers, while the danger of creating melanoma elevated by roughly 30 % per 10 cm of peak in each women and men.
The study found that for every 4 inches of additional height, women are 18 percent more likely to suffer from cancer, and men are 11 percent more likely.
According to a research in Sweden, the risk of cancer rises with height among both genders: men and female. Their health was tracked beginning in 1958, or from when they were 20 (for those born in later years), until the end of 2011.
“It is hard to predict what impact our results have on an individual level considering that cancer development is complex and depending on many different factors”. The researchers say their risk estimates are comparisons, not absolute risks, and give this example to explain how it works: Swedish women have a 10 percent risk of developing breast cancer in their lifetimes. “Bigger people have more cells”.
“Tall people shouldn’t worry that they are destined to get cancer”, said Mel Greaves, a researcher at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.
The Swedish researchers did not look at possible confounding factors such as smoking in their study, but the size of the sample and the good quality data meant that it could be taken seriously even though the full results have not been published, other scientists said.
The findings of the new study are being presented at the 54th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
So how might height and cancer risk be related?
Researchers are now planning on investigating how mortality from cancer and other causes of death are associated with height within the Swedish population.
The disease claimed 8.2 million lives and was diagnosed in almost 15 million patients around the world in 2013.
Jane Green, a clinical epidemiologist at Oxford University, said that adult height it not itself a “cause” of cancer, only a marker for factors relating to childhood growth.
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Dr Benyi said: “Identifying different risk factors could be the first step in understanding the mechanisms behind cancer”. “Being tall doesn’t mean that you will develop cancer”, she said.
