Diabetes in older patients can increase risk of breast cancer

Mon, 12 Dec 2011
A new preliminary study has claimed that women over the age of 60 who are either diabetic or obese face a higher risk from breast cancer than those who are neither. With a link between obesity and a greater risk of breast cancer also being found in previous research, this project showed that there was also a link with diabetes after factors such as obesity and cholesterol levels were taken into account.

The research involved the medical histories of over 2,700 women for up to a decade before they developed breast cancer, as well as details on around 20,500 women that had never developed cancer. It was revealed that obesity after the age of 60 boosted the risk of breast cancer by 55 per cent while, up to about four years after a diagnosis of diabetes, women at any age faced a 37 per cent greater chance of developing breast cancer.

In addition, a link was shown between extremely low levels of blood lipids or fats and a 25 per cent greater risk of breast cancer, with those women with higher cholesterol levels having a lower risk.

Researcher Hakan Olsson, from Lund University in Sweden, also said that diabetes drugs being taken have a bearing on risk of breast cancer, with some treatments being associated with a nearly doubled risk of breast cancer while others were linked with a somewhat lower risk.

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