by ecancer reporter Will Davies

Yesterday, ecancermedicalscience published a systematic review exploring the incidence and interplay of Type II diabetes mellitus and prostate cancer.

From 8 studies comprising almost 3 million participants, the researchers investigated the associations of diabetes and prostate cancer. Mixed reporting and unexplored mechanisms of the effect of metabolic disturbance on prostate cancer pose big questions affecting a growing patient population.

At the same time in Austin, at the AACR meeting on obesity and cancer, it was reported that obese men have a higher chance of disease recurrence after radical prostatectomy than other men.

These findings sit close to the 6% of all cancers linked to obesity and diabetes.

Compounded by the emerging links of high-cholesterol diets and colon cancer, and surges in incidence already seen in kidney and stomach cancers, the health and livelihood of the 61% of men in the UK ranked as overweight is a matter of growing concern.

With that comes a burden of cost in care and cure, with obesity and diabetes costing the US health system an estimated $1 billion a day, far and away eclipsing the $80 billion annual economic impact of cancer.

With WHO director general Margaret Chan describing the obesity and diabetes epidemics world wide as a “slow-motion disaster… a bad situation [getting] much worse”, one might feel at a loss for what to do, or how...

In good news, 2017 has been a land-mark year for prostate cancer; the STAMPEDE and LATITUDE trials showing improved survival and slower disease progression for abiraterone.

For diabetes and cancer together, concerns of an increased risk of cancer due to a common diabetes treatment SGLT2 inhibitors were taken on, with no link found in a meta-analysis.

Other recent investigations are also building on the common-sense recommendations of healthy diet and exercise where possible, with Mediterranean diets especially linked to risk reduction, and high sugar consumption unsurprisingly linked to both obesity and diabetes.

At this point, the Venn diagram of cancer, diabetes and obesity starts to look pretty tight in its overlapping.

Given tumour cells' high metabolic turnover and propensity to use any fuel at their disposal, a low-sugar, low-cholesterol diet with plenty of exercise seem to be words to live by.

As revolutionary a position as “healthy living is good for you” may be, rates of obesity and diabetes in the UK and many other countries continue to climb.

As one of the authors of the ecancermedicalscience paper, Mieke Van Hemelrijck notes, “The prevalence of T2DM is rising worldwide and its onset is occurring earlier in patients’ lives. This coupled with improvements in PCa survival ensures that the interplay between these two conditions will only become increasingly important in the years to come.  Nevertheless, aspects of the relationship remain relatively understudied.”

Recommendations recently published in ecancermedicalscience set out actionable, achievable markers to improve ones whole-body health and cancer risk, with each additional health behaviour reducing overall cancer risk by 8%:

• lower alcohol consumption,
• more fruit and vegetables in your diet,
• more physical activity,
• lower BMI 
• not smoking.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Let’s hope that public awareness campaigns such as Prostate Cancer UK's ‘Man of the Hour’ can translate to public health initiatives, disease prevention and longer, healthier lives for all the overweight men out there.

Including myself!