Adding to Evidence That Obesity Treatment Prevents Cancer
The evidence keeps building. Broadly, it is telling us that treating obesity is about much more than simply losing weight. It is about gaining health by managing the chronic disease of obesity and controlling it over time. Specifically this week, we have another piece of evidence to suggest that obesity treatment prevents cancer.
In JAMA Oncology, researchers examined the risk of cancer in 43,317 adults with obesity taking a GLP-1 medicine in comparison to 43,315 matched nonusers. They found a 17% reduction in overall cancer risk, a 25% reduction in endometrial cancer, a 47% reduction in ovarian cancer, and a 31% reduction in meningioma. For other cancers (myeloma, colorectal, thyroid, prostate, breast, lung, pancreatic, liver, bladder, and upper GI cancer) they found reductions that were not statistically significant. For kidney cancer, they found a nonsignificant increase in cancer.
Important Findings That Require Follow-up
Authors Hao Dai and colleagues explain the importance of their findings:
“Given that more than 137 million individuals in the US are currently eligible for GLP-1RA therapies, even modest changes in cancer risk could have substantial public health implications. This study is one of the first to assess the association between GLP-1RA use and cancer risk in the broad, real-world population with obesity or overweight who are eligible for obesity medicines.
But they note that this observational study should not be the final word. They also caution that the observation of a statistically nonsignificant increase in kidney cancer risk is not something to ignore:
“For kidney cancer, the exploratory analysis indicated a marginally elevated risk associated with taking GLP-1RAs. This finding is consistent with a recent study, which reported a significant increase in kidney cancer risk among individuals taking GLP-1RAs compared with metformin in patients with T2D.
“The biological mechanisms underlying a potential increased risk of kidney cancer remain unclear, especially given that GLP-1RAs have been shown to improve kidney function in other studies. Further research is needed to clarify this potential risk.”
More to Learn
It is clear enough that untreated obesity raises the risk of 13 different kinds of cancer. Multiple studies have shown that metabolic and bariatric surgery can reduce the risk of these cancers. Observations about the benefit of newer obesity medicines for reducing cancer risk are much newer and thus, we have much to learn.
But emerging data tell us that ongoing treatment of obesity yields much more than just lost weight. It produces important gains in health. These new data on cancer risk help to fill out that picture.
Click here for the study in JAMA Oncology and here for further reporting on it.
Cancer novaezelandiae, photograph from the Auckland Museum Collections, licensed under CC BY 2.0
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August 25, 2025
