Prediagnostic Plasma C-Peptide and Pancreatic Cancer Risk in Men and Women
Pancreatic cancer is arguably one of the worst cancers we experience. Outcomes are exceedingly poor, treatment successes are rare, and there are no good methods to detect the cancer early enough to be of real value. To top that off, it seems that the prevalence is skyrocketing. So, as always, this boils down to prevention. As a way of background, C-peptide is a protein release in the formation of insulin, and thus can be used as a marker of how hard the pancreas is working to produce insulin.
In this study, non fasting C-peptide levels led to a whopping 4.24 times risk for pancreatic cancer. This clearly delineates sugar handling / insulin issues as a MAJOR contributing factor to pancreatic cancer. That also means that this cancer is likely to be heavily risk-modifiable.