Bowel Cancer :: Heart disease sufferers likely to develop bowel cancer

It can be called a chain reaction. People who are overweight are more likely to develop heart disease, and the heart disease sufferers are almost twice as likely to develop bowel cancer.

Yes, according to a study carried out by scientists, those who suffer from cardio-vascular diseases — particularly smokers or those having a condition linked to diabetes — are likely to end up with bowel cancer.

The researchers feel that the link might be that both heart disease and bowel cancer are associated with the inflammation of the gut by bacteria.

“Inflammation is now recognised as being pivotal in coronary artery disease. Colo-rectal cancer is also thought to progress through the pathway of inflammation,” the authors wrote in a medical journal.

In fact, the scientists came to the conclusion after studying the presence of bowel cancer or pre-cancerous tumours in patients who had recently been diagnosed with coronary artery disease.

According to their findings, 34 per cent of patients with the artery problem had a sign of bowel cancer risk, and 18.4 per cent had advanced cancerous lesions, against 18.8 per cent and 8.7 per cent in those without heart problems.

The prevalence of actual cancer was 4.4 per cent among those with artery disease compared to 0.5 per cent in those without.

The findings have been published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’.

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