In news around the globe, experts say that rising levels of obesity and unhealthy weights could be linked to 670,000 extra cases of cancer in the next 20 years. According to a UK report, if current trends continue, almost three in four adults could be overweight or obese by 2035, bringing a host of health issues. The Cancer Research UK and UK Health Forum report says TV adverts for some food should be banned before 21:00. There is a commitment from health officials to tackle childhood obesity this is so because studies suggest that obesity is linked to several cancers - including oesophageal (gullet), womb, and bowel tumours. Being overweight has long been associated with conditions such as diabetes and coronary heart disease. In this study, researchers used a computer modelling system, together with historical and current health data, to predict the impact of obesity over the next 20 years. This work suggests a rise in the number of people who are overweight or obese would contribute to 4.6 million additional cases of type-2 diabetes and 1.6 million extra cases of heart disease by 2035. However experts estimate this could lead to an additional £2.5bn in costs to the NHS for 2035 alone. Meanwhile swiss drugmaker Roche Holding recently released encouraging results from a study of its closely watched cancer immunotherapy atezolizumab. Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, said a mid-stage trial of atezolizumab in people with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC), showed median overall survival of 11.4 months in people with higher levels of PD-L1 expression and 7.9 months in the overall study population. It presented that 84 percent of people who responded to atezolizumab continued to respond regardless of their PD-L1 status when the results were assessed with longer median follow-up of 11.7 months. And the therapy was well tolerated and adverse events were consistent with those observed in previous updates, it said. Else where, a study has indicated that the Presence of cancer in one twin increases the risk of the disease in the other. The study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association earlier last week, points out that since twins share the same genes, having cancer in one subjects the other to a higher risk of getting sick but does not necessarily mean that when one twin falls ill, the other gets that cancer or any other type. The new study involved 200,000 people and later found the risk of cancer was 14 per cent higher in identical pairs in which one twin was diagnosed with cancer, whereas in fraternal twins, the risk was five per cent higher in a twin whose other twin was infected. These studies were conducted in twins within Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway between 1943 and 2010.
