Diabetes and cancer

Diabetes and cancer

If chronic diseases are often difficult or complex treatment, it is not surprising that the sum of two chronic entities believes many difficulties.An unfortunately frequent association is diabetes and arterial hypertension.

This is also valid for diabetics in which cancer is diagnosed.Recall that currently neoplasms are included in chronic diseases, that is, long treatment and that demand persistent controls.

On the other hand, because both diabetes and certain types of cancers constitute diseases of increasing prevalence, it was important to establish what happened to those cancer patients who were also diabetic.

This was the purpose of the investigation practiced by a group of specialists from Comprehensive Cancer Center, Eindhoven (Netherlands), which analyzed the prevalence of diabetes in individuals with a recent diagnosis of cancer, as well as the influence of diabetes on the stadium (orstages) in which this diagnosis was made, the type of treatment that was used and the results in terms of survival.
The investigation included nothing less than 58,498 individuals diagnosed between 1995 and 2002, which were followed until 2005.
Although the percentage of cancer patients who were diabetic at the time of their diagnosis corresponded to 9%, the prevalence of diabetes was greater among women suffering from breast neoplasia (19%) or uterine (14%).

In diabetics, the diagnosis of cancer had been carried out in more advanced stages of the disease, compared to non -diabetics.Another established difference was that in non -diabetics greater number of chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments were carried out, which, in turn, were more "active" or intensive.It is possible that these data are related to the fact that the physical conditions of the diabetics can prevent the application of more effective oncological treatments.

The sense of transmitting these data is not to instill alarm among the diabetic population but to alert about a reality.This is the irrefutable fact that chronic diseases, when they are added, cause greater damage to the individual who suffers them and force to redouble efforts to obtain control of each of them.

At present, these difficulties in treatment are widely known to oncologists, who always work in a joint way with the clinician or the diabetologist, so that both diabetic and non -diabetic can be treated in a similar way and with similar results.

Digital Medical Editor, September 2007

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