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Association between psoriasis and incident cancer: the Iowa’s Women’s Health Study

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Abstract

Introduction

Studies have reported higher cancer risk in individuals with psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease; however, adjustment for potential confounders was lacking.

Methods

We examined the association of psoriasis with cancer incidence in 32,910 women after age 65 in the IWHS cohort linked to Medicare. Psoriasis was defined as: 2+ psoriasis claims from any Medicare file during 1991–2004 or 1+ psoriasis claim from a dermatologist (n = 719). Severe psoriasis was defined as 4+ psoriasis claims from a dermatologist in any year (n = 121). Cox proportional hazards regression, with psoriasis as a time-dependent variable was conducted to calculate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of total (n = 6,488), breast (n = 2,066), lung (n = 742), and colon cancers (n = 947).

Results

With age-adjustment, psoriasis (yes vs. no) was associated with increased risk of lung 1.9 (95% CI: 1.2–3.0), colon 1.6 (95% CI: 1.1–2.5), and total cancer 1.2 (95% CI, 1.0–1.4). After further adjustment for smoking, body mass index, education, physical activity, and hormone therapy use, only the association for colon cancer remained statistically significant (HR = 1.6, 95% CI: 1.0–2.4) and was stronger for severe psoriasis.

Conclusion

The observed association between psoriasis and colon cancer may reflect inflammatory or unidentified processes.

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Notes

  1. E. Warshaw, Department of Dermatology, University of Minnesota, October, 2009, personal communication.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the IWHS staff for consultation and assistance in data preparation. The authors are especially thankful to Bill Baker for help with the analysis of Medicare data. This study was supported by National Cancer Institute grant R01 CA39742.

Conflict of interest

The authors state no conflict of interest.

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Correspondence to Anna E. Prizment.

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Prizment, A.E., Alonso, A., Folsom, A.R. et al. Association between psoriasis and incident cancer: the Iowa’s Women’s Health Study. Cancer Causes Control 22, 1003–1010 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9773-0

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