DNA Flaws may Contribute to Cancer Risk in Type 2 Diabetes Patients

A DNA flaw may clearly explain why type 2 diabetes patients are more prone to blood cancers, finds study.

Doctors have long known that Type 2 diabetes is associated with leukaemia and lymphoma, but the reasons for this have been unclear.

Type 2 Diabetes - Risk Factors - Symptoms & Signs - Management - Prevention
Globalization and changing lifestyles has made diabetes very common in developing countries so much so that India is known as the Diabetes Capital of the World.

Researchers in France and Britain, looking at blood samples from nearly 7,500 people, including 2,200 patients with Type 2 diabetes, suggest the answer lies in cellular mutations called clonal mosaic events (CMEs).

These are defects that result in some cells having extra copies -- or, alternatively, missing copies -- of large stretches of genetic code.

Reporting in the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers said that in the general population, CMEs are usually very rare in young people but become more common with ageing.

About Leukemia
Encyclopedia section of medindia gives general information about Leukemia

Among people aged over 70, around two percent have these mutations, which gives them a tenfold higher risk of developing blood cancer, previous research has found.

But among people with Type 2 diabetes, CMEs were four times more common than otherwise healthy people, the new study found. They also had a far higher rate of kidney failure, eye disease or heart disease.

Diabetes Risk Assessment Calculator
Almost one-third of the people are unaware of the risk factors of diabetes. Find out if you run the risk of diabetes by using Diabetes Risk Assessment calculator.

"Type 2 diabetes is a disease that accelerates ageing, so we wondered if it would make people more likely to have these genetic defects that are associated with ageing," Philippe Froguel, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, who led the study, said.

"This finding may partly explain why people with Type 2 diabetes are more likely to get blood cancers."

Leukemia / Blood Cancer
Leukemia is cancer of blood-forming tissues in the body.

Froguel, who worked with counterparts from France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), said that, in the future, a genetic test could help identify patients with Type 2 diabetes who are likelier to develop CMEs.

"These patients would be followed up closely to watch for early signs of leukaemia and could start having mild chemotherapy," he said in a press release.

According to the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO), 347 million people around the world have diabetes, a disease in which the body fails to break down glucose in the blood through the hormone insulin.

Ninety percent of these have the Type 2 form of the disease, which typically shows up in adulthood or late childhood, driven by obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

Source-AFP