Having diabetes increases a person’s risk for developing leukemia, lymphoma, or multiple myeloma—and their risk for dying from the cancer should it occur, researchers reported in Diabetologia.
Using Canadian healthcare database information from 1996–2015 encompassing 1,003,276 patients with diabetes and 2,006,552 without, the researchers found that those with diabetes, regardless of time since diagnosis, had a 27% increase in risk for leukemia, 11% for lymphoma, and 15% for multiple myeloma. They were also 13%, 14%, and 29%, respectively, more likely to die from those diagnoses than patients without diabetes. All-cause mortality averaged 36% higher among all cancer diagnoses as well.
“Greater efforts for lifestyle modification may not only reduce diabetes burden and its complications but may also potentially lower risk of malignancy and mortality,” the researchers concluded.
Oncology nurses can use cancer prevention and screening education to inform patients with diabetes about their cancer risk and strategies to reduce it.