The Impact of Diabetes Mellitus on Breast Cancer Outcomes: A Single Center Retrospective Study

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus has been implicated to affect the prognostic outcomes of patients with various types of cancer. This study explores the impact of diabetes mellitus on the survival outcomes of patients with all stages of breast cancer. We performed a retrospective analysis of 255 patients with all stages of breast cancer. Survival outcomes were compared for diabetic and non-diabetic patients. A greater percent of patients in the non-diabetic group (54.1%) presented with early-stage (stage 0 and 1) cancer than diabetics for which 41.2% presented with stage 0 or 1 breast cancer; however this difference did not achieve statistical significance (p = 0.068). Overall, we observed a significant difference in survival between the diabetics and non-diabetic subjects (p = 0.001). Even after adjustment for all covariates and after stratification for Body Mass Index (BMI), diabetics were found to have a poorer prognosis in terms of survival time. In patients with breast cancer, diabetes mellitus is an independent predictor of lower overall survival rates, even after adjusting for other comorbidities. Primary caregivers and oncologists alike should aggressively screen breast cancer patients for diabetes mellitus and vice versa.