People who are obese or overweight have an increased risk of developing 10 of the most common cancers in the United Kingdom, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine and the Farr Institute of Health Informatics estimate that each 5 kilogram body mass index (BMI) was linked with a higher risk of developing cancers of the uterus (62 percent increase), gallbladder (31 percent), kidney (25 percent), cervix (10 percent), thyroid (9 percent), and leukemia (9 percent). Higher BMI also increased the overall risk of liver (19 percent), colon (10 percent), ovarian (9 percent), and breast cancers (5 percent), but the effects on these cancers varied by underlying BMI and by individual-level factors such as sex and menopausal status.

"The number of people who are overweight or obese is rapidly increasing both in the UK and worldwide. It is well recognized that this is likely to cause more diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Our results show that if these trends continue, we can also expect to see substantially more cancers as a result," study leader Krishnan Bhaskaran said in a statement.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from general practitioner records in the UK's Clinical Practice Research Datalink. They team identified 5 to 24 million individuals aged 16 and older who were cancer-free and had been followed for an average of 8 years. The risk of developing 22 of the most common cancers, which represent 90 percent of the cancers diagnosed in the UK, was measured according to BMI after adjusting for individual factors such as age, sex, smoking status, and socioeconomic status.

Nearly 167,000 people developed one of the 22 cancers studied over the follow-up period. BMI was associated with 17 out of the 22 specific types of cancer examined.

"There was a lot of variation in the effects of BMI on different cancers. For example, risk of cancer of the uterus increased substantially at higher body mass index; for other cancers, we saw more modest increases in risk, or no effect at all," Bhaskaran said.

The variation shows that BMI must affect cancer risk through a number of different processes, depending on cancer type.

The findings were recently published in The Lancet.