Here's another reason to stay trim and control your blood pressure.

A study of nearly 900 men with kidney cancer found the risk of developing a tumour nearly doubles when a person is obese and more than doubles when their blood pressure is high.

"Effective control of weight and hypertension may be useful in the prevention of this increasingly common type of cancer," said the research team, led by Wong-Ho Chow of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

The study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, was based on the health records of 363,992 Swedish men, 895 of whom developed some type of kidney cancer. In the United States, 2 to 3 percent of newly-diagnosed tumours are found in the kidney.

(Agencies)