A Stockholm study helmed by Dr Emelie Benyi and her team at the Karolinska Institute on 5.5 million records of Swedish people born between 1938 and 1991 suggest that after a baseline of one meter the risk of cancer is increased by about 18% for every extra 10cm to a woman's height. The risk is lower for men at around 11% for every extra 10cm.
According to BBC, the teams's findings suggest a variety in the cancer types where taller women, for example, had a 20% risk of breast cancer while both tall men and tall women had an 30% increase in risk of developing melanoma.
The paper on the full research is yet to be published so that appraisal of the methods used for the study is still in the offing. The role of external factors to height such as lifestyle and health practices in the results is yet to be made public. The study was initially presented by the team at the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology conference.
Still, researchers from the University of Oxford released a study in 2011 that linked height increase in women to in increased risk of 10 different cancers.
Professor Dorothy Bennett, who heads the Molecular Sciences Research Centre at St Georges, University of London suggests a simple explanation, and this that the taller a person the more cells he has.
"A cancer develops from one single cell, so it's very plausible that the risk of getting a particular kind of cancer depends on the number of cells of that particular type that you've got."
Medical Statistics Professor Tim Cole of the University College London assures tall people against becoming anxious about their height. Among other advantages, increased height would also mean a lesser risk of other conditions such as heart disease.
He suggests, "Being taller suggests you've had a better experience, a more healthy experience in childhood."
"The general rule is, the healthier you are in childhood, the more likely you are to be healthy later in life. There is a relationship with height - that you can [also] see with heart disease - which is related to inequality and social class."
In The Guardian, clinical epidemiologist Dr Jane Green of the University of Oxford had this to say, "In general, I would caution against interpreting a link as causal - however for height and cancer there is considerable evidence that suggests that the link is not explained by other known factors. Clearly, adult height is not itself a 'cause' of cancer, but is thought to be a marker for other factors related to childhood growth.
