Diabetes can increase the risk of developing a number of cancers, and may reduce the chances of survival in cancer patients, a study has found.

Researchers from the Swedish National Diabetes Register compared over 450,000 people with type 2 diabetes with more than 2 million matched controls over an average of 7 years.

For the most common cancers, individuals with diabetes face a 20 per cent greater risk of developing colorectal cancer and a five per cent higher risk of breast cancer compared with their diabetes-free counterparts.

People with diabetes already diagnosed with cancer also fare worse, with a 25 per cent and 29 per cent higher chance of dying following a breast and prostate cancer diagnosis respectively than their peers without diabetes.

Previous research has suggested a link between type 2 diabetes and an increased risk of cancer.

However, the relationship between diabetes and cancer remains poorly understood due to limitations of previous studies.

To provide more evidence, researchers examined the incidence of a number of cancers and post-cancer mortality in 457,473 individuals with type 2 diabetes from the NDR between 1998 and 2014, compared to 2,287,365 controls from the general population over an average of 7 years follow up.

A total of 227,505 people developed cancer over the follow-up period. Diabetes was associated with 11 out of the 12 specific types of cancer investigated in the study.

Scientists found that people with diabetes were 231 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with liver cancer than those without a history of diabetes over the study period.

Diabetes was also clearly linked with higher risk of cancers of the liver, pancreas , uterus , penis , kidney , gallbladder and bile ducts, stomach, and bladder.

There was evidence that those with diabetes were at a reduced risk of prostate cancer (18 per cent) compared to their peers without diabetes.