Diabetes Risk In Childhood Cancer Survivors

Filed in archive Notable , Research on August 19, 2009

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Childhood cancer survivors who underwent total body or abdominal radiation therapy may have an increased risk of diabetes.

Such were the findings reported in the August 10/24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine (one of the JAMA/Archives journals):

Of the survivors, 218 (2.5 percent) reported having diabetes, while 49 (1.7 percent) of siblings reported having the condition.

"After adjustment for body mass index, age, sex, race/ethnicity, household income and insurance, the survivors were 1.8 times more likely than the siblings to report diabetes mellitus, with survivors who received total body irradiation, abdominal irradiation and cranial irradiation at increased risk.

Survivors who were treated with abdominal irradiation were 2.7 times as likely to report diabetes mellitus as those who were not treated with abdominal irradiation or total body irradiation; those treated with total body irradiation were 7.2 times as likely to report diabetes mellitus."

The above findings do not appear to be related to patients' body mass index or physical inactivity.

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