The Research Roundup provides an overview of the past week’s research from Mayo Medical Laboratories consultants, including featured abstracts and complete list of published studies and reviews.
It is unclear how long pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs) are present before diagnosis. Patients with PDAC usually develop hyperglycemia and diabetes before the tumor is identified. If early invasive PDACs are associated with hyperglycemia, the duration of hyperglycemia should associate with the time that they have had the tumor. Mayo Clinic researchers collected data on patients with PDACs from medical databases in Olmsted County, Minnesota, from 2000 through 2015 and from the Mayo Clinic's tumor registry from January 1, 1976, through January 1, 2017. They compared glycemic profiles of patients with PDAC (cases) compared with patients without cancer, matched for age and sex. Researchers analyzed temporal fasting blood glucose (FBG) profiles collected for 60 months before patients received a PDAC diagnosis. FBG profiles of patients with resected PDAC stratified by tumor volume and grade, and temporal FBG profiles of patients with resected PDACs from whom long-term FBG data were available. The primary outcome was to estimate duration of presence of invasive PDAC before its diagnosis based on hyperglycemia, defined as significantly higher FBG levels in cases compared with controls. In a case-control study of patients with PDAC from 2 databases, researchers associated FBG level with time to PDAC diagnosis and tumor volume and grade. Patients are hyperglycemic for a mean period of 36 to 30 months before PDAC diagnosis; this information might be incorporated into strategies for early detection. The study was published in Gastroenterology.