Dr. Wagaskar on the Rationale to Evaluate the Obesity Paradox in Prostate Cancer

Vinayak G. Wagaskar, MBBS, instructor of urology, Mount Sinai, discusses the rationale to evaluate the relationship between obesity and outcomes in prostate cancer.

Several studies have emerged suggesting that morbidly obese individuals with genitourinary malignancies with a high body mass index (BMI) have improved survival compared with patients with a lower BMI, says Wagaskar. This is known as the obesity paradox because the belief is that obese patients would have naturally worse outcomes vs non-obese patients, Wagaskar says.

During the 2021 EAU Congress, findings from a retrospective study demonstrated that BMI is a significant predictor of overall survival in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Moreover, obese patients had a higher survival probability vs overweight and normal weight patients.