Kinkini Gupta
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Written By: Kinkini Gupta | Updated : June 6, 2022 2:03 PM IST
Cancer Can Spike Blood Sugar Levels And Stop Insulin Production
If you put together a profile of people at increased risk of developing cancer, it would look a lot like a description of people at increased risk of diabetes. Connections between the two diseases has been there for a long time, but only recently scientists have been able to identify the exact reason for the relationship between the two. They had initially specified that a symptom of diabetes, which is high glucose levels in the blood may contribute to the onset of cancer. On a converse note, some cancer-fighting treatments and cancer itself have also been identified as the cause of spikes in blood sugar levels or suppression natural insulin production which would cause diabetes in cancer patients.
New research suggests that cancer patients could also be at a risk of developing diabetes. The effects of cancer are severe for many patients. The lingering impacts and complication that persists because of the disease have reduced the quality of life for many survivors. Experts have associate diabetes with certain types of cancer. Associate professor Lykke Sylow and Christoffer Johansen of The National Centre for Cancer Survivorship and General Late Effects (CASTLE) stated that the study demonstrated that there is an elevated risk of developing diabetes if a person is affected by lung, pancreatic, breast, brain, urinary tract or uterine cancers.
There are chances that various cancer therapies may increase the risk in patients and cancer itself can also be the cause of diabetes. Experts state that cancer cells are able to secrete substances that can affect organs and possibly contribute to an increased incidence of diabetes. In some regions of the body, radiation therapy that attacks cancer cells may also destroy cells that produce insulin. And steroids, which are often used to reduce nausea during chemotherapy, are among the drugs that raise blood sugar levels.
As stated in the study, Immunotherapy may also contribute to diabetes. People who take checkpoint inhibitors, which are known to be used to treat kidney, lung and blood cancers have also been studied to develop severe cases of diabetes. Researchers state immunotherapy may attack not just cancer cells, but insulin-producing cells in the pancreas as well. The reaction may lead to the more severe type 1 diabetes. Pancreatic cancer patients are five times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than patients with no history of cancer.
People diagnosed with cancer and subsequently with diabetes do not live as long as patients who do not develop diabetes while experiencing cancer. Experts have observed in their study that cancer patient without diabetes survived longer compared to cancer patients diagnosed with diabetes. A mortality rate of 21 per cent was found in patients who were diagnosed with cancer and diabetes.
Experts say there is a solution to this:
