Are any of you chemists/biochemists?
I read this article:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_analog The section on Carcinogenicity and Criticism are of interest to me. (For a long time, I was still under the impression that we were using animal insulin LOL.).
Any scholarly papers, original sources for carcinogenicity and criticisms of insulin analog?
Interesting Question, I am a chemist, but defiantly not a biochemist. That said, there was a couple of interesting papers that popped up that I linked below.
What questions do you have?
Thank you for sharing the articles.
I have not yet read the three articles. I was wondering about zinc. I thought that I heard that there could be concerns about zinc and possible negative health effects. Are you aware of the specific risks associated with zinc and also the more recent insulins such as Tresiba? Many of us are using Tresiba for our basal insulin.
The specific mention of cancer is rather new to me.
I will look into the zinc issues, I haven’t heard of that specifically. The studies that will yield the best benefit will be European analyses of their diabetic populations. The reason is they have the ability to include every patient in the country in a registry and collect the data. The Dutch do this, as well as the UK and some others.
When you look at the Scotland paper, you see that the Lantus that was thought to have the highest cancer risks of the insulin’s, didn’t cause a measurable increase in cancer in their population. That gives me the most comfort. While that isn’t all insulin’s, it is an indicator that even though we should be vigilant, we shouldn’t over worry about this.
@Chris, I seem to have missed the mention in the article – why was Lantus considered the highest risk?
Because of the Glargine. I speed read about 10 papers, and glargine was the most suspect of the insulins. However, in a population study (Scotland) it didn’t appear to increase the risk of cancer.