immunosuppression and cancer

July 6, 2007

> > As for that cancer study.... What would happen if they ran the same 4

> > year study using prednisone or another steroid?

> empirically, I think this effect would be likely to have been

> detected if it existed. A lot of people with organ transplants or

> immune diseases are on heavy immunosuppression, and I know there has

> been some worry that these treatments could increase cancer. So I

> *suspect* it's probably been quite well-studied, but obviously that's

> not worth much.

Here is a quick example:

Many of the reverse citations cover the same topic or similar, such as

this one:

I didn't read anything beyond a few of the abstracts. And I doubt any

of these studies took the form of a randomized trial, since there's

probably no population in which it would be ethical to bomb half the

people with steroids for years, and prohibit steroid use in the other

half. So, it's not golden data, but at least it can be said that there

isn't much evidence that corticosteroids prevent cancer. Surely

someone has studied this in animals in order to obtain experimental

data free of observational-study-type artifacts... but I didn't see

any animal studies in my 5-minute look at this subject.

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