Older Women Reduce Their Endometrial Cancer Risk With Weight Loss

Women who intentionally lost five per cent or more of their body weight had 29 per cent lower risk of developing endometrial cancer during the study.

Postmenopausal women who intentionally lost weight over the course of three years had a much lower risk of endometrial cancer up to 11 years later compared to women whose weight didn’t change, a US study finds.

Overall, women who intentionally lost five per cent or more of their body weight had 29 per cent lower risk of developing endometrial cancer during the study period, and the effect was most pronounced for obese women, whose risk dropped by 66 per cent with weight loss.

“We decided to do the study because we realised that, although obesity increases the risk of endometrial cancer, research couldn’t say if intentional weight loss, especially among older persons, could reduce that risk,” said lead author Juhua Luo, School of Public Health at Indiana University in Bloomington.