Diabetes may be an early manifestation of pancreatic cancer, Oxford University research claims. Recent-onset diabetes is strikingly higher among pancreatic cancer patients compared with those with colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer.
- Diabetes may be an early manifestation of pancreatic cancer.
- The number of new cases of diabetes is strikingly higher in pancreatic cancer compared to other cancers.
- Diabetes is associated with a more than two-fold higher risk of pancreatic cancer.
The majority of the diabetes patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed with diabetes less than three years before the cancer diagnosis. Among pancreatic cancer patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomies (the surgical operation often used to try to remove pancreatic tumors), over half of patients with recent-onset diabetes have no diabetes postoperatively. Researchers have observed no effect in those who have had diabetes for more than three years.
Here researchers examined the association between recent-onset diabetes and pancreatic cancer in a prospective study of African Americans and Latinos, two minority populations with high diabetes risk.
Questionnaires, Medicare data, and California hospital discharge files were used to identify new diabetes diagnoses. A total of 15, 833 (32.3 percent) participants developed diabetes between 1993 and 2013. A total of 408 incident pancreatic cancer cases were identified during follow-up.
During an average follow-up of 14 years, among those with diabetes, 128 participants developed pancreatic cancer. Among participants without diabetes, 280 participants developed pancreatic cancer. In pancreatic cancer with diabetes, 52.3 percent of cases developed diabetes in the 36 months preceding the pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
Diabetes was associated with an approximately twofold increased risk of pancreatic cancer. When stratifying by disease duration, people with recent-onset diabetes had the highest risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Importantly, the researchers demonstrated that the association of recent-onset diabetes with pancreatic cancer incidence was evident in African Americans and Latinos, two understudied minority populations with high risk of diabetes but different pancreatic cancer rates.
"This striking relationship between recent-onset diabetes is unique to pancreatic cancer, and is not seen in breast, prostate and colorectal cancer in the cohort," said one of the paper’s authors, Wendy Setiawan. "Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that recent-onset diabetes is a consequence of pancreatic cancer and that long-standing diabetes is a risk factor for this cancer. Importantly, here we show that the association of recent-onset diabetes with pancreatic cancer is observed in African Americans and Latinos, two understudied minority populations." References:
- Diabetes may be an Early Manifestation of Pancreatic Cancer - ( https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-06/oupu-dmb061418.php)
Source-Eurekalert