Ulcerative Colitis May be Associated With Prostate Cancer

Inflammatory bowel disease was associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer in a large-scale, prospective cohort study published online in the International Journal of Cancer.

Noting that inflammatory bowel disease is an established risk factor for colorectal cancer, and that recent reports also suggest a potential link with prostate cancer, researchers conducted their study to further investigate the potential association between inflammatory bowel disease and prostate cancer. Their population-based study included 218,084 men in the UK Biobank cohort.
____________________________________________________
You may also like...
Vivian Huang, MSc, MD, on Optimizing the Management of IBD in Pregnancy
Marla Dubinsky, MD, on Managing Infections in Crohn Disease
____________________________________________________

Participants were ages 40 through 69 when they entered the study between 2006 and 2010. Approximately 1% of the men had a diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease.

Over a median 6.5 years of follow-up, men with inflammatory bowel disease had a higher risk of incident prostate cancer, according to the study. Researchers reported an adjusted hazards ratio of 1.31.

The association between inflammatory bowel disease and prostate cancer occurred only with ulcerative colitis, researchers specified, and not with Crohn disease. Adjusted hazards ratios were 1.47 among men with ulcerative colitis and 1.06 for men with Crohn disease.

—Jolynn Tumolo

Reference

Meyers TJ, Weiner AB, Graff RE, et al. Association between inflammatory bowel disease and prostate cancer: A large-scale, prospective, population-based study [published online ahead of print May 13, 2020]. Int J Cancer. doi:10.1002/ijc.33048