Emmanouil Bouras, Dipender Gill, Verena Zuber, Neil Murphy, Niki Dimou, Krasimira Aleksandrova, Sarah J Lewis, Richard M Martin, James Yarmolinsky, Demetrius Albanes, Hermann Brenner, Sergi Castellví-Bel, Andrew T Chan, Iona Cheng, Stephen Gruber, Bethany Van Guelpen, Christopher I Li, Loic Le Marchand, Polly A Newcomb, Shuji Ogino, Andrew Pellatt, Stephanie L Schmit, Alicja Wolk, Anna H Wu, Ulrike Peters, Marc J Gunter, Konstantinos K Tsilidis
BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third-most-common cancer worldwide and its rates are increasing. Elevated body mass index (BMI) is an established risk factor for CRC, although the molecular mechanisms behind this association remain unclear. Using the Mendelian randomization (MR) framework, we aimed to investigate the mediating effects of putative biomarkers and other CRC risk factors in the association between BMI and CRC. METHODS: We selected as mediators biomarkers of established cancer-related mechanisms and other CRC risk factors for which a plausible association with obesity exists, such as inflammatory biomarkers, glucose homeostasis traits, lipids, adipokines, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), sex hormones, 25-hydroxy-vitamin D, smoking, physical activity (PA) and alcohol consumption...
April 11, 2024: International Journal of Epidemiology