One of the greatest childhood health problems today is the high prevalence of obesity and obesity-related diseases, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, hypertension, gallbladder disease, chronic respiratory disease and many cancers, say university faculty members John DiGiovanni and Stephen Hursting.
They will study the impact of obesity on cancer development and progression, including obesity that occurs early in life.
“Obesity in children has risen dramatically in recent years, and the growing epidemic is alarming,” said DiGiovanni, who joined the Colleges of Pharmacy and Natural Sciences in January. “Obesity in both adults and children increases the risk of cancer development as well as severity of the disease for a number of important cancers.”
Over the past 25 years, the number of Texas children and adolescents who are overweight or obese has more than quadrupled, with nearly 25 percent of elementary, middle school and high school students overweight, and another 20 percent at high risk of becoming overweight.
The epidemic is occurring in girls and boys, across all socioeconomic lines and among all racial and ethnic groups.
“While we have made important gains over the past 20 years with early detection and better treatments for many cancers, there is no doubt that our progress in reducing the suffering and death from cancer has been significantly slowed by the obesity epidemic,” said Hursting, who is chairman of the Department of Nutritional Sciences and specializes in obesity-cancer research.
Cancer is a disease involving gene-environmental interactions and, therefore, understanding environmental influences as well as genetic factors is key to developing the most effective strategies for preventing cancer, said the researchers.
“Understanding the early cellular, biochemical and molecular changes that transform normal cells into cancer cells is essential if we are to eventually eradicate cancer as a major human disease,” DiGiovanni said.
“Approximately 75 percent of overweight children will be obese adults,” he said. “Given the rising number of overweight and obese kids in Texas, it is extremely important to develop effective ways for preventing obesity and obesity-related diseases in children and young adults.”
Hursting hopes the work of their team, which also includes nutritional science faculty members Drs. Linda deGraffenried and Nomeli Nunez, will lead to new strategies for reducing cancer with a combination of diet, exercise and medicine that will target specific genes.
“Our goal is to identify targets for breaking the obesity-cancer connection,” he said. “We recognize that not everyone can run five miles a day or have a drastic change in diet. But if we can identify those molecular targets that are important we can use that information to disrupt the link between cancer and obesity.”
Read the full feature story on the University of Texas at Austin web.