Diabetic Smokers Might Not Die from Lung Cancer

STATES CHRONICLE – A new study has demonstrated that diabetic smokers might not die because of lung cancer. They are more likely to suffer from another type of cancer which could eventually cause their death. The name of the study is “Diabetes and mortality in the national lung screening trial.” The research was recently presented at the Radiological Society of North America Meeting this week, taking place in Chicago.

Scientists at the University of Colorado at Denver have worked on the study. The research had as a cornerstone the data collected by the National Lung Screening Trial. Thus, the study used data from 53,212 individuals where 5,174 were participants diagnosed with diabetes. Specialists have analyzed a series of factors which were relevant to the research. They have looked at the patients’ sex, age, body mass and some cigarettes smoked per year.

Scientists used the proportional hazards model of Cox to determine the relative risks of developing types of cancer, including lung cancer. Even if most of the people expect lung cancer to be related to heavy smoking, the study showed the contrary. There is not always the case that smokers suffer from lung cancer. However, many of them are diagnosed with another type of cancer.

The new study proved that diabetic smokers were expressing high risks of developing other types of disease compared to what people expected to happen. Approximately 3,936 of the participants in the study have died. Further analysis proved that only 1,021 of them had lung cancer. About 826 other members died from diseases related to other types of cancer.

What was most striking for everybody was that diabetes provoked an increase in the risks of non-lung cancer, but also of mortality rates among men. When analyzing females, scientists have established that diabetes managed to raise the risks of lung cancer, non-lung cancer, but also high risks of death. Those people who were diagnosed with diabetes had higher body mass indexes.

Also, they were also among those who consumed a lot of cigarettes per year, being categorized as heavy smokers. The combination of diabetes and heavy smoking resulted in being extremely dangerous. After conducting CT scans to all of them, the results proved that the occurrence of lung cancer in individuals could be limited if they manage to control their diabetes.

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