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Objective To evaluate the strength and validity of the evidence for the association between adiposity and risk of developing or dying from cancer.

Design Umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Data sources PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and manual screening of retrieved references.

Eligibility criteria Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of observational studies that evaluated the association between indices of adiposity and risk of developing or dying from cancer.

Data synthesis Primary analysis focused on cohort studies exploring associations for continuous measures of adiposity. The evidence was graded into strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, or weak after applying criteria that included the statistical significance of the random effects summary estimate and of the largest study in a meta-analysis, the number of cancer cases, heterogeneity between studies …