NORMAN, Oklahoma – A professor at the University of Oklahoma is conducting research that may improve the lives of those who have experienced breast cancer.
Elizabeth Wellberg, assistant professor of pathology, published a news study in “Nature Reviews Endocrinology” that links breast cancer to Type 2 diabetes.
“There is a connection between diabetes and cancer, and it is a cycle,” Wellberg said. “We know people who have Type 2 diabetes will have a higher risk for developing breast cancer.”
She also said the reverse is true – that people with cancer are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes.
“Diabetes itself impacts your risk of breast cancer, as well as your response to therapy,” she said. “The literature would suggest a relationship in both directions where if you have diabetes, you’re more likely to get breast cancer. If you have breast cancer, the treatments that you receive now we’re learning are associated with later life development of diabetes.”
She said diabetes can also inhibit the success of treatment.
Wellberg said that over the past 30 years, more people are surviving breast cancer than ever before; however, work still needs to be done to improve the quality of life after breast cancer.
“Cancer drug treatment has done really well scientifically and medically,” Wellberg said. “This relationship between the particular type of endocrine therapy for breast cancer and diabetes risk highlights what will become an important area of research in the future as our cancer treatments improve.”
Endocrine therapy is the field of medicine that impedes growth of hormone-sensitive tumors by blocking the body from producing hormones.
“We are looking at survivorship issues. We can reasonably expect people to beat breast cancer now, but that wasn’t true even 30 years ago,” she said.
Wellberg said the cancer drugs themselves are part of the problem, since they are correlated with Type 2 diabetes.
“The data are crystal-clear that these are lifesaving drugs for people diagnosed with breast cancer, and people should absolutely continue to take them according to their doctor’s recommendations,” Wellberg said. “But because these patients face a higher risk for developing diabetes, we can do more to monitor them and intervene earlier in order to prevent the onset of diabetes.”
In this publication, Wellberg looks at tamoxifen and armatase inhibitors, which suppress estrogen signaling.
“Estrogen affects every tissue in the body,” Wellberg said. “When you give a drug, it’s not only going to the tumor, it’s going everywhere, so it’s no wonder there are whole-body effects from the loss of estrogen.”
Wellberg’s article can be found at nature.com/nrendo. Additional authors on the publication are Nisha Thomas, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Pathology in the OU College of Medicine, and Rebecca Scalzo, an endocrinology researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado.