A protein can predict the risk of diabetes and death from cancer: the study

A protein could predict a person's risk of developing diabetes or dying from cancer. It's called prostasin, and according to a study published in "Diabetología," the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EADV), when present in large quantities in the blood, it can increase the chances of developing "sweet blood disease" by 76% and death from cancer by 43%. This association is particularly pronounced when elevated prostasin is also associated with hyperglycemia.

Researchers analyzed blood samples from 4,658 adults (average age 58 years, 40% men) taken as part of the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study, a large, prospective study that has been ongoing since the early 1990s in the southern Swedish city of Malmö. The published analysis is "the most comprehensive of its kind ever conducted and sheds new light on the biological link between diabetes and cancer," says Gunnar Engström of Lund University in Malmö, co-senior author of the paper. The paper identifies prostasin, which is primarily present in epithelial cells that line the body's internal and external surfaces, as "a potential new risk marker for the development of diabetes and cancer mortality, especially in people with high blood sugar levels," notes first author Xue Bao of the affiliated hospital of Nanjing University Medical School in China. An accurate and easily accessible "spy" indicator, because it can be measured through simple sampling. The results correlating prostaglandin levels with the risk of diabetes and cancer death remained valid even after correcting for various confounding factors, such as age, sex, waist size, bad cholesterol levels, blood pressure, medication intake, smoking, and alcohol consumption. However, the authors emphasize that the study is observational and describe several limitations: for example, the blood samples used were stored for at least a decade, and the data obtained from participants in one Swedish city may not be generalizable on a large scale to other populations. Although it is known that people with type 2 diabetes are approximately twice as likely to develop pancreatic, endometrial, and liver cancer, and have a 30% increased risk of bowel cancer and a 20% increased risk of breast cancer, the mechanisms behind this link remain poorly understood. Researchers focused on prostasin because of its effects on regulating sodium levels, blood volume, and blood pressure, and because the substance has been observed to affect hyperglycemia-induced tumor growth and is associated with glucose metabolism. They found that elevated prostasin concentrations correlated with the presence of diabetes (people with protein levels in the top quartile were nearly twice as likely to have diabetes than those with prostasin concentrations in the lowest quartile) and that the protein was significantly associated with both cancer and all-cause mortality. For each doubling of prostasin concentration, the risk of cancer mortality increased by 139% and 24%, respectively, among participants with and without elevated blood glucose levels. On the other hand, no correlation was found with cardiovascular mortality. "Since prostasin plays a role in controlling several biological pathways associated with diabetes, which are also involved in the development of some cancers, it could potentially mediate the process that links high blood sugar to cancer, or at least act as a marker for cancer susceptibility in people with high blood sugar. To analyze this in more detail, it will be useful in future studies to trace the exact origins of "circulating" prostasin in the blood and determine whether the association between prostasin and diabetes is causal."

Dr. Liberia Oropallo, MD