Reduced breast cancer risk for celiac disease patients

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Reduced breast cancer risk for celiac disease patients

http://www.medwire.md/News_single.aspx?newstype=35 & date=20040809 & story_id=27009

UK research suggests that people with celiac disease have a significantly

reduced risk of breast

cancer.

Joe West and co-workers from the University of Nottingham in the UK carried out

a

population-based study of people with celiac disease to " provide robust

estimates of the

absolute and relative risks of malignancy and mortality, " in such patients.

The researchers identified 4732 patients with celiac disease on the UK general

practice research

database, along with 23,620 matched controls.

They report that, overall, 2.8% of celiac disease patients had at least one

malignancy. A slight

increase in the overall risk of a malignancy was observed among these patients,

with a hazard

ratio of 1.29. They reveal hazard ratios of 1.85 for gastrointestinal cancer,

4.80 for

lymphoproliferative disease, and 1.31 for mortality.

" The risks were most apparent in the year after diagnosis, " the investigators

comment, " and the

decreased risks thereafter suggest that some of the overall excess risk was

likely to be due to

ascertainment. "

When events in the year following diagnosis were excluded, the hazard ratios

decreased to 1.10

for malignancy and 1.17 for mortality. They calculate absolute excess rates of 6

and 17 per

10,000 person-years, respectively.

In contrast, they report that celiac disease patients had a decreased risk for

both lung and

breast cancer, with hazard ratios of 0.34 and 0.35, respectively. Although the

reduced incidence

of lung cancer remained after adjusting for smoking status, the team stresses

that complete

smoking data was not available " so residual confounding remains a possibility. "

" The findings for lung and breast cancer are of interest because of possible

genetic,

nutritional, or environmental factors that may protect people with celiac

disease again certain

malignancies, " they conclude, in the British Medical Journal. " By understanding

the mechanism of

protection in people with celiac disease we may gain insight into the causes of

breast cancer. "