Glycemic traits and colorectal cancer survival in a cohort of South Korean patients: A Mendelian randomization analysis.

BACKGROUND

Clinical diabetic traits have been reported to be associated with increased colorectal cancer (CRC) risk in observational studies. Using the Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis method, we examined the causal association between glycemic traits, such as fasting glucose (FG), fasting insulin (FI), and glycosylated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), and survival in a cohort of CRC patients.

METHODS

We conducted a two-sample MR analysis among a cohort of patients with locally advanced CRC at Seoul National University Hospital. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms robustly associated (p < 5 × 10 ) with the three glycemic traits were obtained from the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium, Asian Genetic Epidemiology Network, and Korea Biobank Array. Three-year and 5-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were used as outcomes. Survival analysis was conducted using subgroup analysis by cancer stage and subsite in a multivariate Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for age and sex to examine whether glycemic traits affected survival.

RESULTS

A total of 509 patients were included in our final analysis. MR analysis showed that HbA1c levels were associated with poor 3-year OS (β = 4.20, p = 0.02). Sensitivity analyses did not show evidence of any violations of the MR assumptions. In the cancer subgroup analysis of the Cox proportional hazards model, pooled hazard ratios for FG were significantly associated with poor 3-year OS and PFS regardless of cancer stage. FI was not significantly associated with any 3-year survival endpoints. Among Stage III patients, three glycemic traits were significantly associated with both 5-year OS and PFS. Location-specific subgroup analysis showed a significant association between three glycemic traits and 5-year PFS in patients with left-sided colon cancer. FG was associated with poor 3-year survival for colon cancer but not rectal cancer.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that FG and HbA1c could be used to predict prognosis in CRC patients. Lifestyle and/or pharmacological interventions targeting glycemic traits could help improve survival for CRC patients.