Abstract
Background: A worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is in progress. This disease carries a heavy socioeconomic burden. Objectives: To compare the incidence rate of overall and sitespecific cancers among Israeli Arabs with T2DM to that of Israeli Arabs without. Methods: A retrospective cohort study of all adult Arab members of Clalit Health Care Services in northern Israel was conducted over a 10 year period (1999-2008). Results: During the study period 752 and 2045 incident cases of cancer were diagnosed among 13,450 adults with diabetes and 74,484 without, respectively. The follow-up time involved 817,506 person-years. Diabetes was associated with a standard incidence ratio (SIR) of 3.27 (95%CI 1.49-5.05) and 2.87 (95%CI 1.25-4.50) for pancreatic cancer in men and women, respectively. A significantly reduced SIR (0.67, 95%CI 0.36-0.99) was observed for esophageal, stomach and intestinal cancers in men. Conclusions: Our findings support an association between T2DM and increased risk of cancer of the pancreas in Arab men and women. A significantly reduced risk of all other cancers was observed only in Arab men. Our findings underscore the need for effective diabetes and cancer prevention and intervention programs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 342-347 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Israel Medical Association Journal |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| State | Published - Jul 2013 |
Keywords
- Cancer incidence
- Cohort studies
- Computerized databases
- Israeli arabs
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine
