November 29, 2004 – Quebec researchers argue that men with diabetes are three times more likely to develop liver cancer than healthy men. According to the conclusions of this forthcoming study, a link between diabetes and pancreatic cancer could also be established.
An epidemiological investigation to establish various risk factors for cancer was conducted during the 1980s. Personal and medical information was collected from 3,797 men, of whom 3,288 had cancer and 509 were in good health. Among the cancerous subjects, 311 of them suffered from both cancer and diabetes.
By studying the files of all these participants, a team of researchers from the University of Montreal found that the risk of developing liver cancer is three times higher in people with diabetes. Likewise, the risk of developing pancreatic cancer appears to be twice as high in diabetics. But this result must be interpreted with nuance, according to DD Marie-Claude Rousseau, who led this study: in several of the participants with pancreatic cancer, diabetes was fairly recent. It is therefore difficult to discern whether the cancer was caused by diabetes or the other way around. In short, the link does exist, but its exact nature will have to be elucidated by further research.
The association between diabetes and these two types of cancer has already been reported by other studies, including one American and another European. Analysis of DD Rousseau took into consideration socio-demographic factors and those related to lifestyle, factors that were not assessed in most previous research. This study would therefore establish one of the most convincing proofs of a link between diabetes and liver cancer. The results of this Montreal research were presented during a meeting of cancer prevention researchers in Seattle, United States, at the end of October. They will be submitted shortly for publication.
Marie france Coutu – PasseportSanté.net
According to La Presse and Forum.