Prostate Cancer Death Risk Higher with Diabetes

A team led by Laurent Azoulay, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, studied 11,920 men newly diagnosed with non-metastatic prostate cancer (PCa). The cohort included 1,132 men (9.5%) with pre-existing type 2 diabetes. A total of 3,605 deaths, including 1,792 from PCa, occurred during a mean 4.7 years of follow-up. Compared with non-diabetics, men with type 2 diabetes had a 23% increased risk of PCa mortality and 25% increased risk of all-cause mortality, after adjusting for potential confounders, including smoking, excessive alcohol use, comorbidities, and PCa-related variables. The findings "may signal an association between hyperinsulinemia or other diabetes-associated metabolic derangements and cancer aggressivity," the authors concluded. Cancer Causes & Control, Jan 2014