Objectives: The association between body mass index (BMI) and ovarian cancer risk is unclear and requiresfurther investigation. The present meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effect of overweight and obesity onovarian cancer risk in the premenopausal and postmenopausal periods. Data sources: Major electronic databaseswere searched until February 2014 including Medline and Scopus. Reference lists and relevant conferencedatabases were searched and the authors were contacted for additional unpublished references. Review Methods:All cohort and case-control studies addressing the effect of BMI on ovarian cancer were included, irrespectiveof publication date and language. The effect measure of choice was risk ratio (RR) for cohort studies and oddsratio (OR) for case-control studies. The results were reported using a random effects model with 95% confidenceintervals (CIs). Results: Of 3,776 retrieved studies, 19 were ultimately analyzed including 10 cohort studiesinvolving 29,237,219 person-years and 9 case-control studies involving 96,965 people. The results of both cohortand case-control studies showed being overweight and obesity increased the risk of ovarian cancer compared towomen with normal weight during both premenopausal and postmenopausal periods: RR=1.08 (95%CI: 0.97,1.19) and OR=1.26 (95%CI: 0.97, 1.63) for overweight and RR=1.27 (95%CI: 1.16, 1.38) and OR=1.26 (95%CI:1.06, 1.50) for obesity. Conclusions: There is sufficient evidence that an increase in BMI can increase the riskof ovarian cancer regardless of the menopausal status, mimicking a dose-response relationship although theassociation is not very strong.
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