BANFF, ALTA., CANADA — Patients with diabetes appear to be at higher risk of developing colon polyps than are nondiabetics, according to the results of a case-control study.
In the chart review of 305 people who had received a colonoscopy, those in whom adenomas and/or carcinomas were detected had seven times the odds of being diabetic than did patients without such lesions.
On the basis of these findings, the investigator recommended that diabetic patients undergo earlier or more frequent colon screening than patients without diabetes.
“Insulin is a growth factor for epithelium in the colon,” Dr. Nitasha Anand said at the Canadian Digestive Diseases Week.
Dr. Anand and her colleagues at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto used ICD-10 codes to identify approximately 9,000 patients who underwent colonoscopy at the institution over a 3-year period. Of these, 305 charts were eligible for analysis, 40 of which were from patients with diabetes. Controls comprised the first 265 consecutive patients without diabetes, so there were 6.6 controls for each diabetic individual. The data showed that 3 of the 40 patients with diabetes had neoplasms, as did 3 of the 265 controls. The odds ratio for patients with diabetes having adenomas and/or carcinomas was 7.4, compared with nondiabetic patients.
The diabetic patients were older than the control patients (mean age 64 vs. 58 years). “Age makes a difference, because the older you are, the more likely you are to have polyps,” she added.