Type 2 diabetes after 60 may be a sign of pancreatic cancer

A study by US researchers says people who develop Type 2 diabetes after 60 are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer. (Photo by FatCatAnna/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

SAN FRANCISCO — A study by US researchers says people who develop Type 2 diabetes after 60 are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.

The new study by the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Sunday.

The researchers studied the data of about 49,000 African-Americans and Latinos, two ethnic groups with a high rate of diabetes, and concluded that people diagnosed with diabetes between the ages of 65 and 85 were more likely to develop pancreatic cancer within three years as compared with people without diabetes.

Latinos were fourfold more likely to develop pancreatic cancer within three years of a diabetes diagnosis, and African-Americans three times more likely, according to the study.

“Because most people with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed at a late stage, the five-year survival rate is low — about 8 percent. Identifying people who are at high risk early on could potentially save their lives,” said V.

Wendy Setiawan, associate professor of preventive medicine at Keck and lead author of the research.

The diagnosis of late-onset diabetes may offer an opportunity to screen high-risk groups with new tools such as liquid biopsy, a test that looks for cancer cells or DNA from cancer cells in the blood, Setiawan said.

More than 1 million Americans are diagnosed with adult-onset Type 2 diabetes every year.