Researchers from Italy examined the coexistence of metabolic syndrome in patients with colon cancer (group 1) and looked for evidence of cancer in patients with metabolic syndrome (group 2). They found that 65% of patients in group 1 had three or more components of metabolic syndrome. In that subgroup, 39.5% had malignant colon disease. In group 2, 46% of the patients had adenomatous polyps found with traditional endoscopy. Two of these polyps were deemed cancerous and were resected.

"These data...suggest that metabolic syndrome [and] obesity is a real risk condition for neoplastic colorectal pathology," wrote Antonietta Lamazza, MD, and Ercole De Masi, MD, from the Ospedale San Carlo-IDI and the University of Rome. The authors, who are in the departments of gastroenterology and surgery, said that alimentary chemoprevention was important in these patients (2009 American Institute for Cancer Research abstract 33).