‘There is a connection’ between asthma and cancer risk, study reveals
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Researchers found people with asthma had elevated risk for lung cancer, blood cancers, melanoma, kidney cancer and ovarian cancer.
- Inhaled steroid use may have a protective effect.
Asthma appeared associated with a 1.36-fold increased risk for developing cancer, according to research conducted at University of Florida.
The study, published in Cancer Medicine, included data on more than 90,000 adults with asthma in the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network between 2012 and 2020. Researchers compared the data with that of about 270,000 adults without respiratory disease.
“We identified an association between asthma and elevated cancer risk, although we are not claiming that asthma causes cancer — we’re only saying that there is a connection between the two. More research is needed,” Yi Guo, PhD, an associate professor in the department of health outcomes and biomedical informatics in University of Florida College of Medicine, told Healio. “We encourage researchers to look at this mechanism in further research, to determine whether there is a causal effect.”
Guo spoke with Healio about the study’s findings and what they might mean for patients with asthma.
Healio: How did this study come about?
Guo: I am a biomedical informatics researcher and I work with different kinds of health-related data, including electronic health records. In a conversation with Jonathan Licht, MD, director of University of Florida Health Cancer Center, he encouraged me and my colleague Jiang Bian, PhD, chief data scientist of University of Florida Health, to look into cancer risk among patients with an asthma diagnosis.
Patients with asthma have complex chronic inflammation in their bodies due to asthma. Inflammation is also heavily indicated in cancer etiology. So, Dr. Licht wanted to look at this association as a potential pathway.
Fortunately, we have access to OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, a statewide data consortium with many clinical partners from across the state. These partners contribute their electronic health records data to this network. The University of Florida is the data coordinating center for this network. We are fortunate to have this data set — at this point it contains data from about 20 million patients.
Healio: What did you find?
Guo: We found that patients with asthma were 1.36 times (99% CI, 1.29-1.44) as likely to develop cancer compared with patients without asthma. This increased risk was seen in association with lung cancer (HR = 1.56; 99% CI, 1.33-1.83), blood cancer (HR = 1.26; 99% CI, 1.08-1.47), melanoma (HR = 1.98; 99% CI, 1.67-2.36), kidney cancer (HR = 1.48; 99% CI, 1.11-1.99) and ovarian cancer (HR = 1.88; 99% CI, 1.4-2.51).
Dr. Licht also proposed that we look at asthma control as a preliminary evaluation of the mechanism. In the exploratory data analysis, we divided the patients with asthma into two groups, one without inhaled steroid use and one with inhaled steroid use. We hypothesized that the cancer risk would still be elevated, but not as high as in the group who didn’t use steroids at all. We looked at the data, and the data confirmed this hypothesis. This finding points us in the direction of inflammation as the potential mechanism. We provided that initial evidence.
Healio: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
Guo: Our study was the first to report this association based on real-world clinical data and the first to report initial evidence on the mechanism. I would also like to highlight that OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network is a goldmine of information about health outcomes and disparities because it includes the medical history of everyone in the network, including diagnoses, procedures done, medication use, lab values and more. We have looked extensively at racial disparities in cancer outcomes using this database. It’s an excellent resource.
For more information:
Yi Guo, PhD, can be reached at University of Florida, 2004 Mowry Road, Suite 2251, Gainesville, FL 32610; email: yiguo@ufl.edu.
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts