Newswise — Diabetic patients run
three times the risk of developing liver cancer, suggests a large US
study in Gut.
The researchers trawled a
surveillance database used for patients in receipt of Medicare
funding for health care, to identify patients aged 65 and older, who
had been diagnosed with liver cancer.
They found 2061 patients with
liver cancer on records spanning the five years between 1994 and
1999. They also randomly selected more than 6,000 other similarly
aged patients from the database, who had not been diagnosed with
cancer.
They checked the claims records
for known risk factors for liver cancer, including hepatitis C and B
viral infections, alcoholic liver disease, and haemochromatosis
(poor absorption and storage of iron). They also checked the claims
records for diabetes.
Compared with patients who did not
have the disease, those with liver cancer were around twice as
likely to be male and of non-white ethnicity. And the proportion of
patients with diabetes was almost twice as high among those with
liver cancer.
After taking into account,
demographics and other major risk factors, diabetes almost tripled
the risk of liver cancer. But the findings also suggest that
hepatitis C could also interact with diabetes to further boost the
risk of developing liver cancer.
The authors suggest that diabetes
might be an independent risk factor for liver cancer, rates of which
have increased significantly in the US in recent years.
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