An epidemiology study of the relationship between pancreatic cancer and diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Objective To investigate the relationship between pancreatic cancer and diabetes mellitus (DM). Methods Two hundreds and twenty patients with pancreatic cancer and 300 controls, who suffered from non-digestive tract, non-neoplastic or non-hormone-related disorders, were enrolled from 1997 to 2007. The incidence of diabetes between the two groups and the relationship between pancreatic cancer and diabetes were compared, pancreatic cancer patients with DM were compared with patients without DM for their gender, age, location and differentiate degree of the cancer. Results The incidence of DM in the two groups were 33.1% and 9.67%, respectively, and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). In the pancreatic cancer group, the proportion of patients with DM diagnosed within 2 years or for more than 10 years were 25.91% (57/73) and 3.18% (7/73), which were significant higher than those in the control group 6.0% (18/29) and 0.67% (2/29)) (χ2=46.15, P<0.01, 0R=6.07; χ2 =4.72, P<0.01, OR=4.90). In the pancreatic cancer group, the proportion of patients with DM diagnosed within 2～5 years or 5～10 years was not significant different when compared with that of the control group, and there was no significant difference in terms of gender, age and cancer location between the pancreatic cancer patients with DM and without DM. The majority of pancreatic cancer patients with DM had corpora mammillaria or well differentiated adenocarcinoma, and the majority of pancreatic cancer patients without DM had differentiated adenocarcinoma. Conclusions DM was closely related with pancreatic cancer and DM may be one of the presentations of pancreatic cancer, as well as a possible risk factor for the tumor. Key words: Pancreatic neoplasms; Diabetes mellitus; Epidemiology