The Association between the Risk of Esophageal Cancer and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: An Updated Meta-Analysis

A large amount of publications had reported the association between incidence of esophageal cancer (EC) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the past decade. However, those papers' results are inconsistent on relationships between T2DM the incidence of EC. Therefore, the objective of this meta-analysis was to determine the relationship between T2DM and the risk of EC (including 2 histological types, esophageal adenocarcinoma [EADC] and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma [ESCC]).

We finally extracted 19 articles though Pubmed, Embased, and Cochrane library. Those identify extraction date including 14,312 cases and 24,959,067 control records and then mixed the relative risks (RRs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) through STATA.

We observed that there are significantly positive correlation between T2DM and EC risk (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.05-1.57, P = 0.015).Also, our study showed positive correlation between T2DM and EADC (esophageal adenocarcinoma) risk (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.05-1.57, P < 0.001). What's more, subgroup analysis based on ethnicity represented the Caucasian is more susceptible to EC (RR = 1.28 ,95% CI: 1.10-1.49, P = 0.001).

Those results offer a recent epidemiological and integrated evidence to ascertain the correlations between T2DM and incidence of EC. Those results take public health implications on preventing T2DM and then depress the occurrence of EC. Our study also provides referenced information for the prevention. However, some data is still insufficient, and more research should be carried out.