Patients with rheumatoid arthritis have a high risk of lung cancer, even after taking into account the effects of established risk factors such as tobacco and asbestos exposure. Researchers from America studied 16,205 patients, including 7,280 patients with lung cancer, 8,678 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 247 patients having both lung cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and 7033 patients with lung cancer but no rheumatoid arthritis, to investigate the occurrence of lung cancer in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Factors like age, gender, race and tobacco and asbestos exposure were taken into consideration for analysing the data. The rate of rheumatoid arthritis was found to be 3 percent among lung cancer patients compared with 2 percent among patients without lung cancer. It was also found that the patients with rheumatoid arthritis had a 43 percent higher risk of lung cancer compared with the controls; and the association between rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer grew stronger with age. The researchers concluded a positive relation between rheumatoid arthritis and the development of lung cancer.
Journal of Rheumatology
September 2008
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