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Approved Research

Mendelian randomization study to investigate diabetes medications and diabetes-related phenotypes in relation to risk of cancer and mortality.

Principal Investigator: Professor Atsushi Goto
Approved Research ID: 71079
Approval date: October 26th 2021

Lay summary

There have been numerous observational studies reporting a possible link between type 2 diabetes and risks of cancer. However, the causal relationship between two has not been established. We previously reported that there is no strong evidence for a causal relationship between type 2 diabetes and overall cancer risk using a Mendelian randomization analysis (i.e., a method of using genetic variants to examine the causal effect of  an exposure on disease in observational studies). Alternatively, it has been pointed out that the higher risk of cancer in patients with diabetes may be due to their diabetes medications. However, there is currently limited evidence on whether specific antidiabetic drugs affect cancer risk or not. In this study, we plan to use the Mendelian randomization analysis to infer a causal relationship between diabetes medications and diabetes-related phenotypes and risk of cancer and mortality using information from the UK biobank, which consists of 500,000 subjects in the UK. In this study, we use genetic and clinical data from this cohort to determine the association between specific diabetic medications and diabetes-related phenotypes and subsequent cancer risk