Child Cancer Patients At Greater Risk Of Diabetes, Study Shows

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/child-cancer-patients-at-greater-risk-of-diabetes-study-shows.html

Cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy as children are at greater risk of developing diabetes later in life, a finding that should prompt changes in treatment guidelines, French and British researchers said.

By age 45, 6.6 percent of those who had received radiation were diagnosed with diabetes, in which the body lacks or becomes resistant to the hormone insulin, according to the survey of more than 2,500 patients. That compared with 2.3 percent of those who hadn’t had radiation. The higher the dose, the more likely the children were to develop diabetes, the researchers wrote in The Lancet medical journal today.

About four out of 10 people with cancer have radiation therapy, or high-energy X-rays intended to destroy tumors, according to the U.K.’s National Health Service. When exposed to radiation, cells in the tail of the pancreas responsible for insulin production may be damaged, which probably accounts for the higher incidence of diabetes, the researchers said.

“The pancreas needs to be regarded as a critical organ when planning radiation therapy, particularly in children,” said Florent de Vathaire from the Center for Epidemiology and Public Health at the Gustave Roussy Institute in France, an author of the research, in an e-mailed statement.