美发现糖尿病与胰腺癌之间的相关性

根据一项人群调查研究的结果提示，在50岁或更大年纪新发生的胰高血糖激素糖尿病，或许是胰腺癌潜在可能的一个指标。这项研究结果发表在2005年8月1日期出版的《胃肠病学》期刊之上。

这种新发生的糖尿病在诊断3年之内罹患癌症的风险，比同龄人要高出8倍之多。胰腺癌在美国每年就夺去32000人的生命，同时每年有同样数目的人被诊断罹患了胰腺癌。患者一直到疾病晚期，才疾病特异性的症状，主要是由于两个原因。一是没有通常罹患癌症的高风险人群，二是缺乏就象前列腺特异抗原（PSA）用于前列腺癌诊断的胰腺癌血液学检查方法。

这项新研究涉及了2122例50岁或者年纪更大的患者，结果显示新罹患的糖尿病现在可以定义为胰腺癌的高风险人群。尽管1％达到糖尿病严格诊断标准的患者，在3年之内罹患胰腺癌；但是大多数患者在疾病诊断后的晚期才罹患胰腺癌。因为这项研究的患者并没有进行过糖尿病患者胰腺癌的普查，所以研究小组着重关注那些疾病发生后得以诊断的患者。

美国Mayo诊所的消化科专家、首席研究员Suresh Chari博士指出：“我们现在的目标是鉴别一种血液中的指标，这种指标能够帮助我们区别与胰腺癌相关的糖尿病以及常见的普通2型糖尿病，这样我们就能够对新发糖尿病患者，在扩散之前就进行筛查胰腺癌。”
Diabetes a Sign of Pancreatic Cancer
 
The results of a population-based study have shown that new onset of hyperglycemic diabetes in adults 50 or older may be a sign of underlying pancreatic cancer. The results of the study were published in the August 1, 2005, issue of Gastroenterology.

The risk of developing the cancer within three years of a new diagnosis of diabetes is eight times higher than for the average same-age individual. Pancreatic cancer claims 32,000 lives in the United States alone each year and has an equal number of diagnoses annually. Patients seldom show disease-specific symptoms until the cancer is at an advanced stage, mainly because of two major obstacles. One is the lack of a high-risk group in whom the cancer is common, and the other is the lack of a blood test for pancreatic cancer that is similar to the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer.

This new study, involving 2,122 patients 50 or older, shows that new-onset diabetes now defines a high-risk group for pancreatic cancer. Although about 1% of patients who met fairly stringent criteria for diabetes developed pancreatic cancer within three years, in most patients the cancer was at an advanced stage at diagnosis. Since patients in the study had not been screened for diabetes or pancreatic cancer, the research team was looking at those diagnosed after the fact.

“Our goal now is to identify a marker in the blood that will enable us to distinguish diabetes associated with pancreatic cancer from the far more common type 2 diabetes, so we are able to screen patients with new-onset diabetes to detect pancreatic cancer before it spreads,” said lead investigator Dr. Suresh Chari, M.D., a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA).