Researchers have recently discovered that the gene which causes the risk of obesity in people is strongly connected to colon cancer. And that’s good because the fat cells inside the body create a smaller risk of colon cancer. On Tuesday, the researchers added that this might be a discovery to reassure the people who have family history of the colon cancer.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that the gene variation was present in about a half of the ones tracked by the researchers. This gene variation controls how much of the hormone adiponectin fat cells secrete and the people who have much of the hormone in them are less likely to develop colon cancer.

This kind of hormone lowers the inflammation of blood vessels and can increase the metabolic rate inside the body. Obese people usually have a higher risk of cancer and they also have less of the hormone inside their body.

The study was made on 1,500 people and the researchers also discovered that the Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry who live in New York were 28% less likely to develop colon cancer as they were the ones who had the gene variation. The other group that had been tracked was from Chicago and those who had the gene were 52% less likely to develop cancer.

Dr. Boris Pasche of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who led the study, wrote that "is this the (genetic) snip that is the cause of the disease? Most likely not. It just gives us a region on the gene where we think the association to colorectal cancer risk stems from."