ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1618799
Global burden of Cancer Attributable to High BMI (1990-2031): a multidimensional analysis based on GBD and Mendelian randomization
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Second Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
- 2The Second Clinical Medical College, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China
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Objective: Obesity-related health burdens have emerged as particularly intractable public health issues on a global scale. This study aims to analyze the association between body mass index (BMI) and 12 types of cancer as well as to examine the regional, gender, and age disparities in cancer burden attributable to high BMI, and projects the disease burden trends over the next decade based on available data.The data were sourced from the IEU Open GWSS Project and the 2021 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) database. Using Mendelian randomization (MR), we investigated the association between BMI and 12 cancer types. And We also collected and analyzed epidemiological data on cancers attributable to high BMI, calculating the estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) across 21 regions, while examining disparities in mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by age, sex, and cancer type. Finally, we used the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model to predict trends in various cancers attributable to high BMI over the next 10 years.In 2021, high BMI accounted for 356,738 global cancer deaths and 8,894,525 DALYs, representing a 160% and 151% increase from 1990 levels (137,353 deaths and 3,549,049 DALYs), respectively. Among cancers attributable to high BMI, colon and rectum cancer accounted for the highest disease burden, thyroid cancer accounted for the lowest proportion of disease burden. Gender-stratified analysis revealed a notablely higher disease burden among females compared to males. Age-specific assessment identified a disproportionately higher disease burden in the 50-79 age cohort. Additionally, both age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) and age-standardized disability rate (ASDR) showed positive correlations with the Socio-demographic Index (SDI). Finally, ARIMA model projections indicate that over the next decade, ASMR for most high-BMI-attributable cancers will maintain stable or increasing trends, with the exception of cancers colon and rectum cancer and uterine cancer. The MR analysis supported a causal relationship between BMI and 11 cancer types (colon and rectum cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder and biliary tract cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, kidney cancer, Lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and leukemia), while no causal association was found between BMI and thyroid cancer.
Keywords: Global burden disease, high body mass index, Cancer, Mortality, Disability-adjusted life-years
Received: 27 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Wang, Liang, Zhang, Zhao, Zhao and Ding. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yinlu Ding, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The Second Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
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