The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer: November, 1996
Liver Cancer

• An association between diabetes and liver cancer? - An international study, focused on Swedish national records for patients discharged from hospitals between 1965 and 1983 with a diagnosis of diabetes, indicated that diabetics, especially men, had an increased risk for liver cancer. Results of a follow-up through December, 1989 of 153,852 diabetic patients were presented by researchers from Sweden and the US in an article appearing in the October 16, 1996 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Among these patients, there were 533 cases of primary liver cancer and 286 cancers of the biliary tract. This represented a four-fold increase in risk for primary liver cancer compared with the general population. Even after excluding the other risk factors of alcoholism, hepatitis and cirrhosis, there was still a three-fold excess risk of liver cancer in diabetics. In the case of men, there was a 4.7-fold greater risk of liver cancer than in the general population, as compared with a 3.4-fold greater risk in women. The risk for gallbladder and other bile-duct tumors was increased between 30% and two-fold. (Adami, J Natl Cancer Inst 88:1472, 1996)