Sarah Wild

The apparent reduction in breast cancer among women with type 1 diabetes needs confirming but may be related to different patterns of child-bearing.

This could happen if the cancer caused symptoms that meant people received a test for diabetes before the cancer was diagnosed, because liver and pancreatic cancers can cause diabetes and also because people with newly diagnosed diabetes will be seeing doctors and nurses frequently and so may report symptoms and get cancers picked up earlier than people without diabetes.

One question that the work addresses is whether long-term insulin treatment increases the risk of cancer and the good news is that there does not appear to be a strong effect.

The risk of some cancers is altered slightly among people with type 1 diabetes but not enough to cause serious concern, one question that the work addresses is whether long-term insulin treatment increases the risk of cancer and the good news is that there does not appear to be a strong effect.