The Bigger the Brain, the Bigger the Tumor Risk?

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Nov. 6, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- The bigger your brain, the greater your risk for a deadly brain cancer, new research from Norway suggests.

It's a matter of math: A large brain means more brain cells, and more cells means more cell divisions that can go wrong and cause mutations that trigger cancer, the study authors explained.




"We wanted to check if this was also the case for brain tumors," Fyllingen said in a university news release.



The investigators looked at everyone who had surgery for high-grade brain tumors between 2007 and 2015, and compared that data with healthy people from the Nord-Trondelag Health Study.


The findings showed that more men than women developed brain tumors.


But it turns out that women with big brains have a greater risk of developing brain tumors, compared with men with big brains, the researchers found.

"Seventy percent more men than women develop brain tumors, but when we correct for head size, it's no longer beneficial to be female," Fyllingen said. "Women with large brains are particularly susceptible. Why that is I have no idea."

The researchers also didn't prove that brain size correlates with cancer risk, just that there was an associaton.

The findings were published recently in the journal Neuro-Oncology.

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SOURCE: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, news release, Oct. 30, 2018
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