Diabetes And Endometrial Cancer Risk

Women with type 2 diabetes had a 70 percent greater likelihood of developing endometrial cancer, study findings suggest.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with cancer of the lining of the uterus (endometrial cancer), regardless of the presence of most other risk factors, study findings suggest.

"A positive association has been observed in nearly all studies of type 2 diabetes in relation to the incidence of endometrial cancer," Dr. Babette S. Saltzman, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, and colleagues note in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

"Given the adverse effect of obesity on the incidence of both diabetes and endometrial cancer, investigators have adjusted for obesity in a number of these studies," they note. "To varying degrees, all found that diabetes was independently associated with endometrial cancer."

To investigate further, Saltzman and colleagues looked at whether the risk of endometrial cancer among type 2 diabetic women differs with respect to other risk factors for endometrial cancer using information obtained in three population-based case-control studies conducted in western Washington State during 1985 to 1999. The studies included 1303 women with endometrial cancer and 1779 without.

Women with type 2 diabetes had a 70 percent greater likelihood of developing endometrial cancer, they found.

Diabetes was associated with endometrial cancer among women who were lean, overweight and moderately obese. Women with diabetes and a history of hypertension (high blood pressure) were also at increased risk for endometrial cancer.

This study, write the researchers, demonstrates that type 2 diabetes is associated with endometrial cancer irrespective of the presence of other risk factors, "except possibly hypertension and extreme obesity."

American Journal of Epidemiology, March 1, 2008.

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