BALTIMORE, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Patients with diabetes when diagnosed with cancer have an increased risk of death compared to patients without diabetes, U.S. researchers said.
Bethany B. Barone of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to examine the association of pre-existing diabetes with long-term, all-cause death in cancer patients.
The researchers identified 48 articles that met criteria for the study, including 23 articles for which data could be included in the meta-analysis.
The meta-analysis of these 23 studies indicated that pre-existing diabetes was associated with an increase in all-cause death following cancer diagnosis, compared with individuals with normal glucose levels, across all cancer types.
Additional analyses by type of cancer showed pre-existing diabetes was significantly associated with increased long-term, all-cause death for cancers of the endometrium, breast and colorectum.
