Assessing How Obesity Affects the Risk of Endometrial Cancer

Obesity is a significant lifestyle factor that affects the development and outcomes of endometrial tumors. Excess body weight can disrupt hormonal balance and promote cellular mutations, increasing the risk of endometrial cancer. We developed a three-step stochastic model that incorporates clonal proliferation at each stage to investigate how obesity affects cancer progression. The model was tested on two datasets: non-obesity-related cases from the SEER registry (2010-2020) and obesity-related cases in women from the CDC (2017-2021). Our results show that obesity mainly impacts the development of endometrial tumors by causing genetic mutations in women. The stochastic model indicates that fat increases the rates of both initial and later mutations. Body weight can affect the rate at which early intermediate cells multiply, especially in women who are still premenopausal. Understanding how these cellular changes happen is important for estimating an individual's risk of developing endometrial cancer.