- Researchers are reporting that type 2 diabetes is associated with elevated risk of colorectal cancer.
- They say a study that included predominantly low-income and African-American individuals showed the increased risk to be 47%.
- Experts say obesity and a lack of access to healthcare and preventive services may be factors.
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Researchers said the association between diabetes and colorectal cancer was even more pronounced among people who lacked recent colonoscopy screenings and those who had a more recent diabetes diagnoses.
“These findings suggest that given the emerging association between diabetes and elevated risk for colorectal cancer, screening via colonoscopy for individuals with diabetes may help to mitigate risk,” the researchers from the University of Wisconsin wrote.
“Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes and we know that those who have this form are at a higher risk of developing certain types of cancer including colon, bladder, breast, liver and pancreatic cancer,” said Dr. Sudarsan Kollimuttathuillam, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Huntington Beach and City of Hope Irvine Sand Canyon in Southern California who was not involved in the study.
“While this is a growing area of research, the data is quite clear that the association between diabetes and colon cancer is not coincidental and that the two are closely related from biology to risk factors,” he told Medical News Today.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, included a cohort of more than 54,000 adults, 66 percent of whom were African American and 53 percent of whom had incomes of less than $15,000 per year.
Researchers led by Thomas Lawler, a lead study author as well as a graduate student and research assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that while past studies have…
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