Diabetes increases cancer risk primarily in women

Diabetes increases the risk of cancer, especially in women, such as researchers at the George Institute for Global Health at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and the University of New South Wales. University of Oxford (United Kingdom), whose work was published in the journal "Diabetologia".

To reach this conclusion, the scientists analyzed 107 published articles and 36 cohorts of patient data, men and women. The statistical analysis examined diabetes (types 1 and 2 combined) with cancer cases in men and women and, for tumors that can occur in both sexes, cancer events specific to each were analyzed .

the researchers found that women with diabetes had a 27% risk of cancer, while the percentage for men was 19%. This risk was particularly pronounced in women in the case of kidney cancer (11% more), mouth (23% more), stomach (14% more) and leukemia (15%). %). However, in liver cancer, the risk for women with diabetes was 12% lower than that for men with diabetes.

In this regard, the experts pointed out that hyperglycemia (ie) can have carcinogenic effects by causing damage to DNA, a potentially more pronounced effect in women because, historically, women have been treated less, receive less intensive care and have fewer antidiabetics than men

. and since it has been found that the average duration of impaired glucose tolerance or fasting glucose is greater than 2 years in women, they may be more exposed to untreated hyperinsulinemia (high blood pressure). Insulin) in the pre-diabetic state.

For all these reasons, researchers have emphasized the importance of a gender-specific approach for quantifying the role of diabetes in cancer research, prevention, and treatment.

However, they acknowledged that more studies are needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying the differences between the sexes in the association between diabetes and cancer.