Diabetes could increase the risk of cancer due to the effect of hyperglycemia on DNA



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Researchers believe that people with diabetes may be more likely to develop cancer because of the high hyperglycemia that affects the DNA.

According to researchers at the National Medical Center of City of Hope, higher blood glucose levels appear to increase the damage to DNA. Too much glucose in the blood also made the DNA strands more prone to break and prevented its repair. The team thinks that this could lead to so-called genomic instability: mutations characteristic of the majority of cancers.

The authors studied laboratory tissues and diabetic mice. This means that the results may not be applicable to humans, but could give an idea of ​​the processes in our body.

The research was presented at the 2019 Fall National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and therefore was not published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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A stock image of a woman tracking her glucose levels. The researchers studied the link between the symptoms of diabetes and cancer.
Getty

Co-author John Termini, a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at City of Hope, said in a statement: "As the incidence of diabetes continues to increase, the cancer rate will also increase.

"Ironically, some cancer treatments increase the risk of diabetes, which in turn increases the risk of cancer.The destructive machine feeds on itself."

Experts already know that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are "significantly" associated with an increase in cancer, but the link is not well understood, the authors wrote in a summary.

Understanding the link between cancer and diabetes is important for more than 100 million Americans with diabetes or prediabetes. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, with 599,108 deaths in 2017.

The team hopes that research can lead to the development of drugs to repair DNA, limit genomic instability and reduce the risk of cancer in people with diabetes.

Drugs that regulate blood glucose, such as metformin, may reduce the risk of cancer. Termini explained: "Metformin helps reduce blood sugar and stimulates DNA repair."

Last fall, a separate team of researchers published findings suggesting that diabetes increases the risk of cancer, especially in women. The authors of diabetology The paper examined existing evidence on 121 cohorts, comprising more than 19 million people.

Toshiaki Ohkuma, lead author of the study and an Australian university researcher in the metabolic and renal division of the George Institute for Global Health, told Live Science that women often spend more time than men in the pre-diabetic stage of the disease. , where glucose levels are high compared to men. Once diagnosed, "women are often under-treated or do not receive the same treatment as men," Ohkuma said.

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