Diabetes linked to higher risk of blood cancers: Study

Canada: Diabetes patients are at a higher risk of haematological malignancies and mortality, finds a recent study in the journal Diabetologia. Hematological malignancies are cancers that begin in the bone marrow where blood is produced which includes lymphoma, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.

There is a lack of contemporary data on the association of diabetes with haematological malignancies. Lorraine L. Lipscombe, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada, and colleagues, therefore, aimed to evaluate the risk of developing haematological malignancies and subsequent mortality in people with diabetes compared with those without diabetes.

For the purpose, the researchers conducted a population-based observational study using healthcare databases from Ontario, Canada. It included people aged 30 years or older who were free of diabetes and cancer between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2015. The association between diabetes and the risk and mortality of haematological malignancies (leukaemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma) was explored using Cox regression analyses. 

The impact of timing on associations was evaluated with analyses stratified by time since diabetes diagnosis (<3 months, 3 months to 1 year, ≥1 year).

A total of 1,003,276 individuals with diabetes were identified and age and sex matched these to 2,006,552 individuals without diabetes.

 "Diabetes is associated with a higher risk of haematological malignancies and is an independent risk factor of all-cause and cause-specific mortality," wrote the authors. "Greater efforts for lifestyle modification may not only reduce diabetes burden and its complications but may also potentially lower risk of malignancy and mortality." 

The study titled, "Association between diabetes and haematological malignancies: a population-based study," is published in the journal Diabetologia.

DOI: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-020-05338-7