Diabetes is a common cause for concern around the world. Its connection to insulin resistance is a familiar concept to many, but what is less well known is that resistance to insulin is also suggested to be a risk factor for several cancers. However, the human body is a complex thing, and ascertaining causal connections between diseases and issues within the body is far from easy.

Medical researchers explore different ways to search for these connections, and an increasingly common tool in their arsenal is artificial intelligence, in particular machine learning. Yuta Hiraike, a researcher from the University of Tokyo Hospital, and his team have successfully used a machine learning tool they created to prove a link between insulin resistance and several kinds of cancer.

“We recently made a tool, AI-IR, for predicting insulin resistance in individuals based on nine different pieces of medical information. It proved successful and made us think we could apply this tool to related concerns,” said Hiraike.