Breast cancer and diabetes could feed off each other with the cancer suppressing insulin and the diabetes feeding the tumour, a new study claims. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in UK women. One in seven will be diagnosed with it during their lifetime.
And 10 per cent of Brits over 40 have type 2 diabetes with the number of people living with the disease double what it was 15 years ago. However, past research has uncovered associations between the two diseases. Women with type 2 diabetes, for example, have a 20-27 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer.
Insulin resistance – a key characteristic of type 2 diabetes – has been linked with occurrences of breast cancer and poor survival Population studies suggest type 2 diabetes risk begins to increase two years after a breast cancer diagnosis and 10 years after, the risk is 20 percent higher in breast cancer survivors than in same-age women without the disease.
