The Association of Recently Diagnosed Diabetes and Long-term Diabetes With Survival in Pancreatic Cancer Patients: A Pooled Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: It is unclear whether long-standing diabetes or new-onset pancreatogenic diabetes contributes to poor prognosis in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

METHODS: We investigated the influence of diabetes diagnosed shortly before PDAC and long-term diabetes on overall survival in 2792 PDAC patients who had participated in 3 PDAC case-control studies in the Pancreatic Cancer Case-Control Consortium. There were 300 patients with long-term diabetes of more than 3 years' duration (11%) and 418 patients with recently diagnosed diabetes of 3-year duration or less (15%). We performed Cox regression to determine the association of long-term diabetes and recently diagnosed diabetes with overall survival, adjusting for study site, age, sex, race, stage of disease, surgery, chemotherapy, smoking history, and body mass index at diagnosis.

RESULTS: In the overall population, neither long-term diabetes (hazard ratio [HR], 1.10; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97-1.26) nor recently diagnosed diabetes (HR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.94-1.18) was associated with shorter survival. When stratified by stage of disease, long-term diabetes was associated with 42% increase in rate of death in persons with resectable PDAC (HR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.13-1.78), whereas it was not associated with survival in PDAC patients with more advanced disease.

CONCLUSION: Long-term diabetes was associated with increased rate of death in patients with resectable PDAC.