Obesity was good only for those with targeted therapy...maybe the real key was the targeted therapy?
Of all those that received targeted therapy, those who were obese tended to respond better to treatment than those who were not obese. This is a completely separate issue from comparing the response of those receiving the targeted therapy and those receiving the other type of chemotherapy. In fact, this NYTimes article does not even provide any information about any findings that there were in this study about whether the targeted therapy had better results than other chemotherapy in terms of progression-free survival time or overall survival time.
The third paragraph should provide numbers to put the results into context.
1
I knew if I waited long enough, science would find something good about being fat.
2
There's also this: Test results from Canada and Australia and published here:
February issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
"Jan. 28, 2010 -- People who carry a few extra pounds after age 70 tend to live longer than people who don’t, new research finds.
Such as it is.
"A few" is the most important point. The danger is that people who are many pounds overweight will interpret this and other findings that being a little overweight correlates with longer survival with some diseases to mean that being overweight is better, as if it reduced risk of death from all causes. And that is simply not true. It would be tragic if reports of studies like this misled morbidly obese or obese people to think that their weight should not be of concern to them when in fact it raises their risk of so many other diseases.