medwireNews: Findings from the prospective Swedish Obese Subjects study suggest that bariatric surgery in people with concomitant type 2 diabetes and obesity is linked to a lower cancer incidence than conventional obesity treatment.
During a median 21.3 years of follow-up, Magdalena Taube (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and co‑authors observed 68 first-time cancer events among 393 participants who underwent bariatric surgery and 74 events among 308 contemporaneously matched controls. This corresponded to incidence rates of 9.1 and 14.1 per 1000 person–years, respectively, and a significant hazard ratio (HR) of 0.63, adjusting for factors such as age, sex, education, and alcohol consumption.
In women, cancer incidence was significantly lower in the surgery versus the control arm, with an adjusted (a)HR of 0.58. Conversely, this association was not observed among men, but there was no significant sex–treatment interaction, the team notes.
Taube et al also found that diabetes remission at 10 years after surgery was associated with a “drastically reduced” risk for cancer development in the overall study population, with an aHR of 0.40.
“[Τ]his finding supports the role of insulin as a reversible cancer risk factor,” as these individuals “no longer require antidiabetic treatment (including insulin) and have lower endogenous insulin levels,” they write in Diabetes Care.
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