Glucose variability predicts HCC in patients with diabetes

Glucose variability was an independent predictor of hepatocellular carcinoma, according to research presented at the International Liver Congress.

“Diabetes mellitus is a significant risk factor for the development of HCC. Several studies have reported that diabetes increases the risk of HCC by about 2.4 to 4 times. However, there have been no studies exploring exactly which metabolic parameters can be used to estimate the risk of HCC in diabetic patients,” Jeong-Ju Yoo, SoonChunHyang University School of Medicine, said. “Recently, glucose variability (GV) has attracted attention as a prognostic tool in diabetic patients alongside traditional tools such as HbA1c.”

In a nationwide, population-based cohort study, researchers followed 674,178 patients with diabetes who participated in more than three health examinations until the end of 2017 to investigate the relationship between GV and HCC in patients with diabetes. During a median follow-up of 6.7 years, they noted 5,494 cases of HCC; patients with a basal blood glucose level of 180 mg/dL or greater had the highest risk for HCC (adjusted HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.08-1.31). Further, researchers identified a linear relationship between increase in GV and HCC prevalence where the risk for HCC increased by 27% (aHR = 1.27; 95% CI, 1.17-1.38) for the highest quartile of GV compared with the lowest quartile of GV.

“We found that GV is an independent predictor of HCC. Even after adjusting for possible confounding factors, there was a linear association between the increase in GV and the risk for HCC,” Yoo concluded. “The results were consistent for different GV assessment methods and various sensitivity analyses.”