Solange Parra is a second year PhD student from University of Glasgow. The following is a description of a prospective cohort study they have conducted looking at the association between height and risk of 24 cancer sites in the UK Biobank. 

Recent evidence suggests that changes in a population’s height correlate with cancer estimates.  However, the mechanism behind this association is not clear.  Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) has a direct effect on increasing cancer risk but also height. Whether the association of height with cancers differ by IGF-1 has not been fully elucidated. The aim of this study was to investigate the sex-specific associations between height and 24 site-specific cancers to assess whether the association differed by IGF-1.   

More than four hundred thousand (414,923) participants from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study were included. In men, height was positively associated with incidence risk of all-cause cancer and at five sites: Lung, lymphatic, leukaemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and melanoma. In women, it was associated with breast, melanoma, lymphatic, non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and all-cause cancer. The strength of association did not differ by IGF-1 concentration in any of the cancer sites. 

The Key findings of this study were: Adult height was associated with risk of several cancer sites and there was no strong evidence to support IGF-1 moderating the association between height and cancer. 

You can access to this paper published in the British Journal of cancer here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32921791/ 

Find Solange Parra on twitter @S_parrasoto 

This presentation was presented as part of an IHW PGR half-day conference, All aboard