Can Diabetes Help with Prostate Cancer?

The article I researched investigated the relationship between obesity and an excess amount of insulin and their link to increased prostate cancer. It can be accessed here. It’s also mentioned, interestingly enough, that long-standing diabetes may actually be protective against prostate cancer development. It’s said that diabetes can be associated with insulin depletion and decreased insulin like growth factor 1 signaling. Androgens (hormones) and other metabolic factors may also promote prostate cancer using many mechanisms.

There has recently been an increased interest in the role of metabolic factors in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer. Since prostate cancer is a hormone-dependent growth, it would be expected that you can control prostate cancer growth by depriving men of androgens. This therapy continues to evolve, however it has actually been linked to an increased risk of diabetes.

The authors discuss the links between geographic location and the prevalence of prostate cancer. An example of this is that Asian men living in the United States have much higher prostate cancer rates than those living in Asian countries. However, with further study, there is a relatively weak association between BMI and prostate cancer. The risk increase was significant only for advanced disease. Therefore, it’s hypothesized that obesity may actually reduce the risk of non-aggressive prostate cancer.

Studying 19 population-based studies between 1971 and 2005 show that men with diabetes had a 16 percent reduction in their risk of prostate cancer. However, this only occurred from at least five years after the diabetes diagnosis. Studies have concluded that there is a much larger decreased risk of prostate cancer in men with diabetes after a longer period of time from when they’re diagnosed. Some explanations for the protective effect of diabetes include the progressive development of beta cell exhaustion with insulin depletion, simple genetic factors, or the association of diabetes with lower testosterone and insulin growth factor 1 levels.

One can see the possible mechanisms involved with the effects of metabolic risk factors on prostate cancer in the figure. This shows that diabetes and prostate cancer sort of stem from the same shared environmental factors and genetic background. Additionally, a prolonged duration of diabetes and reduced insulin may lead to a decreased risk of prostate cancer. It’s been said that the overall mortality rates among men who developed prostate cancer have been linked with diabetes and a higher risk of cancer case fatality.

In conclusion, there’s an important relationship between obesity and aggressive prostate cancer, and a worse outcome. Things like increased insulin, obesity effects in steroid levels, and disturbances in metabolism may all be important with regards to prostate cancer. This field is attracting more and more research because of the increased prominence of prostate cancer, now worldwide, and the epidemic of obesity/diabetes.

I thought this research was very interesting because no one ever thinks diabetes could actually be beneficial, especially with something as dangerous as cancer. One question that came to mind was if there could be a link between diabetes, prostate cancer, and pancreatic cancer. The links between diabetes and pancreatic cancer have been studied, but I wonder if somehow all three could be related? One may also be curious as to why there’s a difference in prostate cancer occurrence in different geographic locations, much like what we discussed in class – how there are different levels of diagnoses of cancer varying from country to country. Why would this occur? If prostate cancer is linked to diabetes, one would expect a higher level in the United States because we are known to have more diabetes-causing habits (like unhealthy eating). It also seemed odd to me why there is such a much larger decreased risk of prostate cancer in men longer after they’ve been diagnosed with diabetes as opposed to right away.


--Blake