As per a report in the Associated Press, European researchers said that, vis-à-vis the more commonly-known causes of cancer, like smoking and hormone replacement therapy for women, risk of cancer due to the obesity epidemic could dramatically increase in the coming years.

Noting that women are more vulnerable to fall prey to obesity-related cancer, a recently-released European study said that within the next decade, obesity will become the main cause of cancer for women in Western countries.

The study, presented at the joint meeting of the European Cancer Organization and the European Society for Medical Oncology on Thursday, put forth data from 30 European countries, which revealed that colorectal cancer, post-menopausal breast cancer, endometrial cancer accounted for 65 percent of all obesity-related cancer cases.

Meanwhile, the data, obtained from the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, also showed that the overall 'obesity and cancer' cases increased notably from 70,000 in 2002 to more than 124,000 in 2008.

Saying that the results of the study "underlined the urgency of the task and scale" when facing the obesity epidemic worldwide, lead researcher Dr. Andrew Renehan, of the University of Manchester (UK), said: "I must emphasize that we are trying not to be sensationalistic about this. These are very conservative estimates, and it's quite likely that the numbers are, in fact, higher."