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. 2023 Mar 29;23(1):286.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-023-10762-0.

Association of novel and conventional obesity indices with colorectal cancer risk in older Chinese: a 14-year follow-up of the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study

Shu Yi Wang  1 , Wei Sen Zhang  2 , Chao Qiang Jiang  2 , Ya Li Jin  2 , Tong Zhu  2 , Feng Zhu  2 , Lin Xu  3   4
Affiliations

Association of novel and conventional obesity indices with colorectal cancer risk in older Chinese: a 14-year follow-up of the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study

Shu Yi Wang et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Visceral adiposity index (VAI) and a body shape index (ABSI) were newly developed indices for visceral fat mass. Whether they are superior to conventional obesity indices in predicting colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unclear. We examined the associations of VAI and ABSI with CRC risk, and investigated their performance in discriminating CRC risk compared with conventional obesity indices in the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study.

Methods: A total of 28,359 participants aged 50 + years without cancer history at baseline (2003-8) were included. CRC were identified from the Guangzhou Cancer Registry. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to assess the association of obesity indices with the CRC risk. Discriminative abilities of obesity indices were assessed using Harrell's C-statistic.

Results: During an average follow-up of 13.9 (standard deviation = 3.6) years, 630 incident CRC cases were recorded. After adjusting for potential confounders, the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) of incident CRC for per standard deviation increment in VAI, ABSI, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) was 1.04 (0.96, 1.12), 1.13 (1.04, 1.22), 1.08 (1.00, 1.17), 1.15 (1.06, 1.24), 1.16 (1.08, 1.25)and 1.13 (1.04, 1.22), respectively. Similar results for colon cancer were found. However, the associations of obesity indices with risk of rectal cancer were non-significant. All obesity indices showed similar discriminative abilities (C-statistics from 0.640 to 0.645), with WHR showing the highest whilst VAI and BMI the lowest.

Conclusions: ABSI, but not VAI, was positively associated with a higher risk of CRC. However, ABSI was not superior to the conventional abdominal obesity indices in predicting CRC.

Keywords: A body shape index; Colorectal cancer; Obesity; Visceral adiposity index.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Association of baseline adiposity indices (2003-8) with risk of colorectal cancer on 28,359 participants Note: Potential nonlinear relationships were examined using restricted cubic splines (three knots on 10th, 50th and 90th ), with hazard ratio (HRs) from Cox proportional hazard models. The HRs was adjusted for age, sex, smoking, alcohol drinking, household annual income, education, physical activity, intake of vegetable, fruits and red meat
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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