The following is a summary of “Cancer Risk Among Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: A 10-Year Nationwide Retrospective Cohort Study,” published in the October 2024 issue of Neurology by Pierret et al.
People with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) have shown differing findings regarding the cancer risk in previous literature.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study investigating PwMS risk in cancer and matched controls.
They performed a 10-year nationwide matched cohort study (2012–2021) using data from the national French administrative health care database (99% coverage of the French population) to assess the time to the first incident of cancer. The PwMS were identified using long-term disease status, hospitalizations, and MS-specific drug reimbursements, while controls were matched 4:1 on age, sex, residence, insurance scheme, and cohort entry date. Participants with a history of cancer in the 3 years before inclusion were excluded.
The results showed cancer incidence was 799 per 100,000 person-years (n = 8,368) among 140,649 PwMS and 736 per 100,000 person-years (n = 31,796) among 562,596 matched controls (70.8% of women; follow-up: 7.6 ± 3.2 years). A slight overall risk increase was observed for PwMS (HR 1.06, 95% CI 1.03–1.08), particularly in women (HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.05–1.11). In PwMS cancer risk varied, being lower for prostate (HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.73–0.88), breast (HR 0.91, 95% CI 0.86–0.95), and colorectal (HR 0.90, 95% CI 0.84–0.97) cancers, and higher for bladder (HR 1.71, 95% CI 1.54–1.89), brain (HR 1.68, 95% CI 1.42–1.98), and cervical (HR 1.24, 95% CI 1.12–1.38) cancers. In PwMS, the cancer risk was higher than 55 years (HR 1.20, 95% CI 1.15–1.24) but decreased in those aged 65 (HR 0.89, 95% CI 0.85–0.94). Screening participation was lower among PwMS across all national cancer screening programs.
They concluded that in PwMS, cancer risk is slightly increased, particularly for urogenital cancers, with variations depending on age and screening practices.
Source: neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209885
