Height and Body Mass Index and Risk of Lymphohematopoietic Malignancies in Two Million Norwegian Men and Women

[Guest guest]

BlankAmerican Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on October

13, 2006

American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwj353

American Journal of Epidemiology Copyright © 2006 by the s Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health All rights reserved; printed in U.S.A.

Received February 15, 2006

Accepted May 26, 2006

Height and Body Mass Index and Risk of Lymphohematopoietic Malignancies in Two

Million Norwegian Men and Women

Anders Engeland 1 *, Steinar Tretli 2, Svein Hansen 2, and Tone Bjørge 1

1 Division of Epidemiology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway;

Section for Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Department of Public Health and

Primary Health Care, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

2 The Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-based Cancer Research,

Oslo, Norway

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Anders Engeland, E-mail: anders.engeland@...

Abstract

Reports on the association between obesity and lymphohematopoietic malignancies

(LHMs) have been inconsistent. The present study aimed at exploring this

association for specific disease lymphohematopoietic entities in a large

Norwegian cohort. Height and weight were measured in two million Norwegian men

and women aged 20-74 years during 1963-2001. During follow-up, 24,500 cases of

LHMs were observed. Relative risks of disease were estimated by proportional

hazards regression. The risk of LHMs overall increased moderately by increasing

body mass index and height in both sexes. The relative risk of LHMs per

five-unit increase in body mass index was 1.11 (95% confidence interval (CI):

1.08, 1.14) in men and 1.08 (95% CI: 1.05, 1.11) in women. For each 10-cm

increase in height, the relative risk was 1.19 (95% CI: 1.16, 1.22) in men and

1.16 (95% CI: 1.12, 1.20) in women. Separate analyses for different

lymphohematopoietic malignancies did not reveal any group's being particularly

strongly associated with body mass index. A modest increase in the risk of LHMs

combined was observed with increasing height. The moderate associations between

height and body mass index and LHMs found in the present study indicate that the

observed increase in overweight/obesity plays only a minor role in explaining

the increase in the incidence of LHMs.

..