ArticleArthritis research & therapy2022
The risk of newly diagnosed cancer in patients with rheumatoid arthritis by TNF inhibitor use: a nationwide cohort study.
Article in Arthritis research & therapy, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meta-Analysis of the Incidence and Influencing Factors of Malignant Tumors in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2026Pooled it
- Bridging pharmacovigilance and genetic insight: investigating drugs and indications for breast cancer risk in women with autoimmune diseases.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Article
- Age-Specific Risk Factors for Cancer in a Long-Term Korean Cohort of Patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis Treated with TNF Inhibitors.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Risk Factors Associated With Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events and Malignancies in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis in a Real-World Setting in Japan.International journal of rheumatic diseases · 2024Article
- PDIA3 orchestrates effector T cell program by serving as a chaperone to facilitate the non-canonical nuclear import of STAT1 and PKM2.Molecular therapy : the journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy · 2024Article
- Biologics Versus JAK Inhibitors. Part I: Cancer Risk. A Narrative Review.Dermatology and therapy · 2024Review
- Article
- The Role of the NF-kB Pathway in Intracranial Aneurysms.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- The genetic liability to rheumatoid arthritis may decrease hepatocellular carcinoma risk in East Asian population: a Mendelian randomization study.Arthritis research & therapy · 2023Article
- Past, Present and (Foreseeable) Future of Biological Anti-TNF Alpha Therapy.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Review
- Correction: The risk of newly diagnosed cancer in patients with rheumatoid arthritis by TNF inhibitor use: a nationwide cohort study.Arthritis research & therapy · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors use in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has raised safety concerns about cancer risk, but study results remain controversial. This largest nationwide study to date compared cancer risk in TNF inhibitor users to non-biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (nbDMARD) users in Korean patients with RA.
methodsData on all the eligible patients diagnosed with RA between 2005 and 2016 were retrieved from the Korean National Health Information Database. The one-to-one matched patients consisted of the matched cohort. The risks for developing all-type and site-specific cancers were estimated using incidence and incidence rate (IR) per 1000 person-years. Adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were estimated using a Cox regression model.
resultsOf the 22,851 patients in the before matching cohort, 4592 patients were included in the matched cohort. Treatment with TNF inhibitors was consistently associated with a lower risk of cancer than in the nbDMARD cohort (IR per 1000 person-years, 6.5 vs. 15.6; adjusted HR, 0.379; 95% CI, 0.255-0.563). The adjusted HR (95% CI) was significantly lower in the TNF inhibitor cohort than the nbDMARD cohort for gastrointestinal cancer (0.432; 0.235-0.797), breast cancer (0.146; 0.045-0.474), and genitourinary cancer (0.220; 0.059-0.820).
conclusionsThe use of TNF inhibitors was not associated with an increased risk of cancer development, and rather associated with a lower cancer incidence in Korean patients with RA. Cautious interpretation is needed not to oversimplify the study results as cancer-protective effects of TNF inhibitors. A further study linking claims and clinical data is needed to confirm our results.
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