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Diabetes seems to be associated with an increased risk of head and neck cancers, according to a study comparing 89,089 patients newly diagnosed with diabetes and the same number of controls matched for co-morbidities (obesity, coronary artery disease, hyperlipidaemia and hypertension), sex and age.

Overall, people with diabetes were 48 per cent more likely to develop head and neck cancer as their first malignancy than controls. Oral cancer (74 per cent increase), oropharyngeal cancer (53 per cent) and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (40 per cent) were all commoner among patients with diabetes.