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Diabetics may be at higher cancer risk

Category: Cancer Detection and Tumor Markers

Individuals suffering from type 2 diabetes may want to consider seeking a cancer test, as new research presented in the journal, The Oncologist, has found that diabetics are at a significantly higher risk of many types of cancer than the general population.

The study looked at medical records of diabetics in Sweden going back to 1964 and found that these individuals were much more likely to develop several types of cancer, including pancreatic, liver and colon cancer.

Researchers speculated that many cancers may share risk factors with diabetes, and that a condition that causes one of the diseases may lead to the other.

Significantly, diabetics were shown to be at a lower risk for developing prostate cancer than the general public, which lead researcher Kari Hemminiki said may result in more effective treatments in the future.

"Possibly, a lower level of male sex hormones in diabetics may be among the factors that are responsible for this," he said, as quoted by Medwire News. "Unraveling of the underlying mechanisms may give important clues about the shared pathways of T2D and prostate cancer."