Men with diabetes mellitus (DM) are more likely than those without the disease to have prostate cancer (PCa) found in prostate biopsy specimens, a study found.
In a retrospective review of 3,162 men who underwent prostate biopsies at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Muta M. Issa, MD, of Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues found that men with DM had a 26% increased risk of having cancer found compared with those withou DM, according to a report in Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Disease (2012;15:70-74). In addition, men with DM had a 31% increased risk having more aggressive disease, defined as a Gleason score of 7 or higher. Race had no significant effect on study findings, the researchers noted.
At the American Urological Association annual meeting in 2011, researchers from the Duke Prostate Center in Durham, N.C., reported on a study showing that subjects with DM had a nearly 50% increased risk of aggressive PCa compared with men who did not have DM, after adjusting for demographic and clinical covariates. The study included 1,848 men who underwent radical prostatectomy for PCa.
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Previous studies of the association between DM and PCa have yielded inconsistent results, with some studies showing an inverse association and others revealing no association. For example, a study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., revealed that DM was associated with a significant 11% decreased risk of PCa in men with DM, according to a report in the International Journal of Cancer (2011;128:635-643). The study examined data from 4.5 million black and white U.S. veterans.
