Height and overall cancer risk and mortality: evidence from a Mendelian randomisation study on 310,000 UK Biobank participants.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Observational studies have shown that being taller is associated with greater cancer risk. However, the interpretation of such studies can be hampered by important issues such as confounding and reporting bias.

Methods

We used the UK Biobank resource to develop genetic predictors of height and applied these in a Mendelian randomisation framework to estimate the causal relationship between height and cancer. Up to 438,870 UK Biobank participants were considered in our analysis. We addressed two primary cancer outcomes, cancer incidence by age ~60 and cancer mortality by age ~60 (where age ~60 is the typical age of UK Biobank participants).

Results

We found that each genetically predicted 9 cm increase in height conferred an odds ratio of 1.10 (95% confidence

SUBMITTER: Ong JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5943400 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature