Diabetes heightens risk of cancer death

DOCTORS know that diabetics have a higher than normal risk of dying of heart attacks or strokes, but new research on Wednesday showed that having diabetes also raises the risk of dying from many cancers and other diseases.

The findings shed light on the potential burden of a disease that will build in the future, as the number of cases of diabetes is predicted to rise dramatically in coming decades.

'These findings highlight even more the need to prevent diabetes and to understand it better,' said Emanuele Di Angelantonio of Britain's Cambridge University, who worked on the study as part of an international collaboration.

'They show that diabetes is not only a cardiovascular risk factor, but is linked as well to other conditions.' The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), collated and analysed data from 97 previous studies involving more than 820,000 people worldwide.

It found that being a diabetic raised the odds of dying from cancer by 25 per cent, and also increased the risk of death from infection, kidney and liver disease. Among the biggest cancer risks for diabetics were liver and pancreatic cancer, colorectal or bowel cancer, and lung cancer.

Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels with an estimated 280 million people, 6.4 per cent of the world's population, suffering from it and numbers predicted to rise further as obesity rates also increase.