A new study led by the University of Bristol has made an exciting discovery for people with type 2 diabetes.
Published in eBioMedicine, this study is the first of its kind to reveal that weight loss in those recently diagnosed with diabetes can actually change the levels of certain chemicals in the blood that are linked to cancer.
To put this into perspective, Diabetes UK reports that over five million people in the UK are living with diabetes.
And the numbers are rising globally, with estimates suggesting that over 600 million people could be affected by 2045.
The study gains importance in this context, especially since weight loss has become a key focus in treating type 2 diabetes.
This shift in approach comes from the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT), which demonstrated that a dietary program aimed at losing weight could potentially reverse type 2 diabetes.
However, there’s a catch. People with type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of developing various types of cancer. Previous research has shown that having extra body weight can alter the levels of proteins in the blood, some of which are known to be linked to cancer.
This connection between diabetes, body weight, and cancer risk was what prompted researchers from Bristol Medical School and their colleagues from the universities of Glasgow and Newcastle to explore further.
In their investigation, the research team focused on 261 patients who were part of the DiRECT trial. They looked closely at blood samples from these patients, both before and after they had lost weight, to check for changes in proteins related to cancer.
The results were quite striking.
They found that the weight loss intervention led to changes in nine cancer-related proteins in the blood, as compared to a control group who received standard diabetes care without the weight loss intervention.
Emma Hazelwood, a leading author of the study, shed light on the significance of these findings.
She explained that the study helps us understand how type 2 diabetes and obesity might be linked to the development of cancer.
The changes observed in the cancer-related proteins due to weight loss could mean that reducing weight might also lower the risk of cancer in people with diabetes. This is a big deal because it links diabetes treatment directly with cancer prevention.
However, this is just the beginning. The next step, according to Hazelwood, is to figure out whether these short-term changes in cancer-related proteins can actually translate into a long-term reduction in cancer risk for people with diabetes.
The research findings can be found in eBioMedicine.
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