Diabetes may be an early warning sign for pancreatic cancer

The onset of diabetes, or a rapid deterioration in existing diabetes that requires more aggressive treatment, could be an early and hidden sign of pancreatic cancer, warns a new study that analysed data on nearly a million patients with type 2 diabetes.

Researchers found that 50 per cent of all pancreatic cancer cases in Lombardy, Italy and Belgium were diagnosed within one year of patients being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and being given their first prescription to control it.

"In Belgium 25 per cent of cases were diagnosed within 90 days and in Lombardy it was 18 per cent. After the first year, the proportion of diagnosed pancreatic cancers dropped dramatically," said Alice Koechlin from the International Prevention Research Institute in France.

The researchers found that compared with patients who were able to continue with oral anti-diabetic drugs, patients in Belgium and in Lombardy had a 3.5-fold greater risk of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the first three months after their first prescription for incretins (metabolic hormones that stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin to lower blood glucose levels)

This fell to a 2.3-fold risk in the next three to six months, to a two-fold risk for the next six to 12 months.