Cancer Risk Higher in Tall Women

By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: July 20, 2011 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

Tall women are at greater overall risk for cancer than their short counterparts, although the degree of risk varies depending on the type of cancer, a large U.K. prospective study confirmed. Overall, for every four-inch increase in height over 5 feet, women had a 16% greater risk of developing cancer (95% CI 1.14 to 1.17,P<0.0001), according to Jane Green, DPhil, of the University of Oxford, and colleagues./.../