Pooled cohort study on height and risk of cancer and cancer death

open access

Conclusion
Height was associated with risk of cancer and cancer death indicating that factors related to height such as hormonal and genetic factors stimulate both cancer development and progression.

Introduction
Adult height, determined by genetics and by nutrition in
childhood, has been associated with an increased risk of
some cancers such as cancer of the prostate [1], breast [2],
colorectum [3], ovary [4, 5], pancreas [6], kidney [7], testis
[8], endometrium [9], malignant melanoma [2, 10, 11], and
with lymphohematopoietic malignancies [12]. However,
there are only a few studies on all cancer sites, [2, 13–15]
and only one of these studies included men as well as
women [13]. Height has also been associated with an
increased risk of cancer death in contrast to the decreased
risk of total mortality and mortality from cardiovascular
diseases [16, 17]. To the best of our knowledge, no large
study to date has analyzed risk of cancer at all sites and
cancer death in the same study......