Front Endocrinol: Sulfonylureas and Cancer Risk in Type 2 Diabetics

Background: Diabetes and cancer continue to be major health problems worldwide, with nearly 500 million people living with diabetes, and cancer being the first or second leading cause of death in more than 100 countrie.

Sulfonylureas are one of the most commonly used GLDs and have been used clinically for more than 60 year.

Given conflicting evidence on the association of sulfonylureas with cancer and insufficient evidence from the Chinese population, we conducted a population-based cohort study to assess the effect of sulfonylureas on cancer risk in patients with T2D.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study of T2DM patients new to sulfonylurea and metformin use was performed using the Yinzhou Regional Health Care Databas.

RESULTS: After fully controlling for time-varying confounding, baseline confounding, and competing risk, sulfonylurea use was not associated with the risk of any cancer (hazard ratio 09; 95% CI, 93-27.

TableAssociation between sulfonylurea use and risk of all cancer.

TableAssociation between sulfonylurea use and risk of any cancer in different subgroups of participant.

Table 3 Association between sulfonylurea use and site-specific cancer ris.

Figure 1 Adjusted dose-response relationship between cumulative duration of sulfonylurea use and cancer ris.

Table 4 Results of sensitivity analysi.

Conclusions: After appropriate control for confounders and other biases, this study did not find an association between sulfonylurea use and cancer ris.

Original source: Zhao H, Liu Z, Zhuo L, et a.