Doctors know that diabetes is associated with several serious complications, now there's growing evidence that cancer could be a new diabetes health risk. New work has discovered that women diagnosed with diabetes have an 8% higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer in general, while diabetic men had a 9% increased chance after incidents of cancer of the prostate were taken out of the equation.

The chance of dying from cancer was higher for diabetics - 11% higher for women; 17% greater for men.

We know that diabetes is the result of too little insulin, resistance to insulin or both. It affects more than 20 million in the United States. Today there is no cure for diabetes, managing the disease can include medication, diet and exercise and is the best way to reduce your symptoms, prevent complications (blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, amputation of limbs) and prolong your life.

Cancer, defined by medicine as the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body, comes in many different guises. It can develop in any organ or tissue in the body. The symptoms depend on the type and location of the cancer, and with certain cancers, appear only at the advanced stages of the disease. While a diagnosis of cancer is hard to deal with, life altering perhaps, the disease can be treated successfully.

This most recent study used data from just shy of 300,000 men and another nearly 200,000 women who lived in eight different U.S. states. Diabetes was not formally diagnosed, rather it was self reported, so we don't know whether subjects had type 1 or 2, though it's thought the majority of subjects had the more common, type 2 diabetes. The initial study also didn't account for diabetes management or medications, so these factors could not be evaluated.

After 11 years, 55,888 of the men and 26,000 of the women had been diagnosed with cancer.

The chance of developing liver cancer was more than doubled for those with diabetes, the chance of rectum cancer rose by 28% and colon cancer risk went up by 15% in those suffering from diabetes. For males, the chance of pancreatic, as well as bladder cancer was increased; for females stomach, uterine and anus cancer was a greater risk for those suffering from diabetes.