Obesity and colorectal cancer.

Background: To correlate obesity and colorectal cancer for Greek living conditions.

Patients And Methods: We studied 97 patients, who over the last 5 years were diagnosed histopathologically with colorectal cancer. 75.3% of the patients were either overweight or centrally obese; secondly, 21.6% patients had diabetes, percentages higher than those in the population (statistically significant). Hyperinsulinaemia and resistance to insulin have been implicated in colorectal carcinogenesis.

Conclusions: As our sample was small, no statistically significant evidence correlating diet and/or physical activity to colorectal cancer has emerged.