Many people get scared at the mention of pancreatic cancer due to its low survival rate. Currently, it is the third leading cause of death from cancer in the United States, with a five-year survival rate of only 12 percent, which ranked last among the 22 cancer types surveyed, according to the American Cancer Society. Lifetime risk of developing pancreatic cancer is 1 in 59. So, what are the risk factors for pancreatic cancer? According to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute website in Boston, the risk factors are;
- Smoking. 2. Suffering from long-term diabetes. 3. Chronic pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas, especially in smokers). 4. Being over 55 years of age. 5. Obesity.
I personally know 5 people (friends and families), who died from pancreatic cancer, and none of them smoked. None of them had a diabetes except one who was suddenly diagnosed with the disease. None of them were obese except one. Three were over 55 years old, but one was in their 20’s and the other one was in their 40s. So, these risk factors may not ease the concerns of those who none of these apply to. We all know that the earlier you find cancer, the higher the survival rate. So what are the early signs of pancreatic cancer? You can search “Pancreatic Cancer Symptoms” online and see the list of over 10 symptoms which could be something else, and doctors easily overlook the connection between the symptoms and pancreatic cancer. As I always say, you need to be your own doctor to track down your symptoms.
According to 2022 research from the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford, there are two critical changes in physical indicators associated with the cancer: weight loss and elevated blood sugar.
Rapid Weight Loss
Losing weight should be a sign of good health, but it could be something else. The researchers analyzed data from 8,777 pancreatic cancer patients and compared them to a control group population of nearly 35,000 through collaboration. They found that two years prior to being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one obvious change in a patient’s body was dramatic loss of weight. In fact, three of those died from pancreatic cancer did lose weight without any effort in a short period of time.
Sudden onset of diabetes
“Having diabetes for a long time is a risk factor for pancreatic cancer because of higher-than-normal levels of insulin circulating in the blood, high blood sugar, and long-term inflammation caused by type 2 diabetes”, says V. Wendy Setiawan, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, who’s led long-term studies of pancreatic cancer risk in diverse populations. However, what we really need to pay attention to is sudden diagnosis of diabetes. For some people, diabetes can rapidly develop because of a problem in the pancreas, instead of the diabetes causing damage to the pancreas in the long run. In other words, diabetes may actually be caused by a tumor in the pancreas. About 1 in 4 people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer were first diagnosed with diabetes.
Those two symptoms might be the signs indicating you should go for further testing. However, Suresh Chari, M.D. from MD Anderson Cancer Center says sending every person with new-onset diabetes to get imaging tests of the pancreas would result in too many unnecessary follow-up surgical procedures when abnormalities seen on scans turn out not to be cancer. Instead of having imaging test, there is newly developed blood-based liquid biopsy tests which may play a role in the early detection of pancreatic cancer.
When cancer cells die, they are released from the tumor into the bloodstream, where they may break down and shed pieces of DNA, proteins, or other cellular parts. A liquid biopsy works by detecting those cellular fragments. The new pancreatic cancer liquid biopsy identifies small extracellular parts called exosomes, small vesicles that carry genetic information between cells. When they are shed into the blood, they still hold the genetic information from the cell they came from.
The researchers identified eight microRNAs (small noncoding RNA molecules) that were uniquely found in exosomes shed from pancreatic cancers. They combined these with five cell-free DNA markers found in the blood of patients with pancreatic cancer to develop a signature associated with this disease.
The blood test, developed by Ajay Goel, Ph.D., of City of Hope Duarte Cancer Center in California and his colleagues, accurately detected early- and late-stage pancreatic cancer in a large and diverse group of people. On top of that, when the researchers combined their blood test with one called CA19-9 (it measures the amount of a protein called cancer antigen 19-9), the combination accurately identified 97% of people with early-stage pancreatic cancer.
Hopefully, this blood test becomes available for yearly check-up, so that pancreatic cancer wouldn’t be a silent killer.
Reference
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2024/liquid-biopsy-detects-pancreatic-cancer
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37709492/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33755268/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-021-00470-0
https://bjgp.org/content/71/712/e836/tab-article-info
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7694042/
https://clinicalepigeneticsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13148-019-0650-0
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