Gene mutation in cancer patients with diabetes: a real-world retrospective cohort study

Diabetes mellitus (DM) exhibits a strong association with tumorigenesis, yet its impact on tumor gene mutations remains poorly understood. Consequently, the present study was conducted to delve into the influence of DM on tumor gene mutations.

This study enrolled 397 lung adenocarcinoma (ADC), 312 colorectal cancer (CRC), and 210 breast cancer (BC) patients between 2016 and 2024. All participants underwent next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect tumor mutation genes (including point mutations, insertion, deletion, inversion, and duplication) and had their clinical characteristics evaluated. Linear regression analysis and Spearman correlation analysis were carried out to evaluate the association between DM and tumor gene mutations.

Herein, tumor patients with DM exhibited significantly lower genetic mutation rates than non-DM individuals across all analyzed cancer types: ADC (49.76% vs. 66.15%, p < 0.001), CRC (28.95% vs. 45.96%, p = 0.003), and BC (34.31% vs. 48.15%, p = 0.042). A history of smoking (OR = 5.250, 95% CI, 1.858-14.835, p = 0.002), clinical stage II (OR = 14.495, 95% CI: 4.860-43.227, p = 0.001), and stage IV (OR = 21.022, 95% CI: 3.753-117.761, p = 0.001) were associated with ADC gene mutations. For CRC, clinical stage II trended toward an association with gene mutations (OR = 4.021, 95%CI, 0.966-16.745, p = 0.056). In BC, WBC count were negatively correlated with BC gene mutations (OR = 0.675, 95%CI, 0.461-0.987, p = 0.043). Notably, DM was independently associated with a reduced likelihood of tumor gene mutations across all cancer types analyzed.

This study suggests that DM may lower the likelihood of genetic mutations in tumors, however, tumor gene mutations are influenced by multiple factors.