Eureka! Institutional Repository

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is one of the most important chronic diseases. It is due to both a lack of insulin (type 1 diabetes) and a resistance of insulin to act on the target tissues (type 2 diabetes). While diabetes is among the fastest growing diseases, cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide and breast cancer the leading cause of cancer death in women. It is the most common cancer in women worldwide and in Greece, it is estimated that one in twelve women will be affected by breast cancer during their lifetime. Both of these diseases show an increasing incidence worldwide. About 9% of patients with diabetes suffer from a depressive disorder and about 25% of them suffer from clinically significant symptoms of depression. Methodology: 90 female patients participated in the research, 60 with T2DM (group B) and 30 with T2DM and breast cancer (group A). The DASS-21 questionnaire was used to determine the levels of anxiety and depression and the ADDQoL-19 was used to measure the patients' quality of life. Results: Regarding quality of life, women with T2DM and breast cancer showed better quality of life (QoL) than women with T2DM. The best levels of QoL were presented by retired women (p=0.025) and, therefore, by postmenopausal women (p=0.035), while women with stage III cancer had a worse ADDQoL-19 score. Regarding mental health, in the women of the A group, a positive correlation of treatment with the occurrence of anxiety and depression (p=0.034) and a negative correlation of cancer stage with mental health was observed. Women in group B showed good mental health in relation to their treatment (p=0.009) while both married and unmarried women had burdened mental health. Conclusions: Women with T2DM and breast cancer generally presented a better clinical picture than women with T2DM. Therefore, the comorbidity of these two diseases did not seem to negatively affect the quality of life and the mental health of the women.