Abstract
This study aimed at summarizing epidemiological evidence of the association between gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and subsequent risk of cancer. We searched Medline, Embase, Cancer Lit and CINAHL for epidemiological studies published by February 1, 2014 examining the risk of cancer in patients with history of GDM using highly inclusive algorithms. Information about first author, year of publication, country of study, study design, cancer sites, sample sizes, attained age of subjects and methods used for determining GDM status were extracted by two researchers and Stata version 11.0 was used to perform the meta-analysis and estimate the pooled effects. A total of 9 articles documented 5 cohort and 4 case- control studies containing 10,630 cancer cases and 14,608 women with a history of GDM were included in this review. Taken together, the pooled odds ratio (OR) between GDM and breast cancer risk was 1.01 (0.87-1.17); yet the same pooled ORs of case-control and cohort studies were 0.87 (0.71-1.06) and 1.25 (1.00-1.56) respectively. There are indications that GDM is strongly associated with higher risk of pancreatic cancer (HR=8.68) and hematologic malignancies (HR=4.53), but no relationships were detected between GDM and other types of cancer. Although GDM increases the risk of certain types of cancer, these results should be interpreted with caution becuase of some methodological flaws. The issue merits added investigation and coordinated efforts between researchers, antenatal clinics and cancer treatment and registration agencies to help attain better understanding.
Highlights
Cancer has become one of the most important threats to human health and life all over the world
gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) increases the risk of certain types of cancer, these results should be interpreted with caution becuase of some methodological flaws
Eleven out of the remaining 17 articles were excluded via full-text evaluation including 6 articles investigating the relation between diabetes mellitus (DM) and cancer, 3 related review articles and 2 articles with irrelevant contents
Summary
Cancer has become one of the most important threats to human health and life all over the world. GLOBOCAN 2008 reported that there were 12.7 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths worldwide (Ferlay et al, 2010). Annual new cases and deaths of the disease will rise to 15 million and 10 million respectively in 2020 (Parkin et al, 2005). Rising prevalence of DM and the high cancer morbidity warrant a careful consideration of the potential effects of this preventable risk factor. Men have somewhat higher risk of both cancer and DM. Several studies on the relationship between DM and cancer have shown that among subjects with DM, women are at higher risk of cancer (Chodick et al, 2011). Given that it is unreality to examine the hormonal levels of women during the period between the beginning of pregnancy
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