Diabetes Raises Risk of Serious Liver Problems

Men with diabetes have about a two-fold greater risk of developing liver cancer and other chronic liver diseases compared with nondiabetic men, new research suggests.

Men with diabetes have about a two-fold greater risk of developing liver cancer and other chronic liver diseases compared with nondiabetic men, new research suggests. The same may hold true in women, but the study did not have enough women to reach firm conclusions. “Our study provides evidence that diabetes is an important risk factor for chronic liver disease including (liver cancer),” Dr. Hashem B. El-Serag from the Houston VA Medical Center in Texas told Reuters Health. The study is also the first to show that diabetes precedes, rather than follows, the development of these diseases, he added. Using the computerized records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, investigators studied all patients with a hospital diagnosis of diabetes between 1985 and 1990. They matched each diabetic patient to three nondiabetic patients and tracked them through 2000. Nearly all of the subjects were men and most had type 2 diabetes. None of the subjects had liver disease when first diagnosed with diabetes. As reported in the medical journal Gastroenterology, the rates of chronic non-alcohol related liver disease and liver cancer were significantly higher in diabetic than in the nondiabetic patients. The increased risk “seems to be independent of age, gender, ethnicity, or (other) illnesses,” El-Serag noted, and is higher in patients with diabetes for 10 years or more. This study, Dr. Adrian M. Di Bisceglie from Saint Louis University School of Medicine points out in an editorial, “provides evidence that long-standing diabetes is followed by the development of liver disease and (liver cancer), suggesting a causative role for diabetes mellitus.” The current study supports the team’s earlier findings from the same group of patients in which diabetes raised the risk of acute liver failure by 44 percent. In light of the present findings, El-Serag and colleagues recommend regular liver blood tests in diabetic patients. Further studies are needed to examine the association between diabetes and liver disease in women and to clarify the mechanisms behind the link, the authors note. (SOURCE: Reuters Health, Gastroenterology, February 2004.)