Scientists at Boston Medical Center have discovered a surprising connection between gallstones and a deadly type of cancer called pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, or PDAC. This type of cancer is the most common form of pancreatic cancer and accounts for over 90% of all cases.
What makes PDAC especially dangerous is that it usually isn’t found until it’s very advanced and hard to treat. Because symptoms often don’t appear until late stages, the survival rate is very low.
Gallstones, on the other hand, are much more common and often harmless. They are small, hard lumps that form in the gallbladder—a small organ under the liver that stores bile, a fluid that helps digest fat. Gallstones form when the balance of substances in bile changes. They can be as tiny as a grain of sand or as big as a golf ball.
Many people with gallstones don’t even know they have them, but for some, gallstones can cause pain in the upper belly, nausea, or other stomach problems.
In this new study, scientists looked at the medical records of over 18,000 people who had PDAC and compared them to nearly 100,000 people without cancer.
They found that in the year before being diagnosed with PDAC, 4.7% of the cancer patients had gallstones, and 1.6% had surgery to remove their gallbladder. In the group without cancer, only 0.8% had gallstones and just 0.3% had gallbladder surgery.
This means that people who were later found to have PDAC were about six times more likely to have had gallstones shortly before their cancer was diagnosed. The researchers presented these results at a major medical conference in 2022, called Digestive Disease Week.
While the link is clear, the researchers do not believe that gallstones cause pancreatic cancer. Instead, gallstones might be an early warning sign—something doctors could use to spot the cancer sooner. And early detection is key. Finding PDAC earlier could give patients a better chance at treatment and survival.
It’s important to know that gallstones are very common, especially in people over 40, women, and those who are overweight. Most people who have gallstones will not get pancreatic cancer. But in rare cases, gallstones may be a signal that something more serious is going on.
The scientists plan to continue their research to understand why this link exists. They hope to find patterns in lab tests or medical scans that could help doctors decide who might be at greater risk. That way, people with gallstones who also show other warning signs could be checked more closely for pancreatic cancer.
This discovery adds to the growing idea that common health problems—like gallstones—might sometimes be clues to more serious conditions. It also shows how paying attention to changes in your health, even small ones, can make a big difference.
In the future, doctors may be able to use this information to detect pancreatic cancer earlier and help save lives. More research is needed, but this finding gives hope that one of the deadliest cancers might one day be found and treated sooner.
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