summary: It was previously thought that patients with MS had a slightly reduced risk of developing cancer but a paper published earlier this year challenged the theory and concluded there was no difference in cancer risk between patients with MS and the general population. Here, the authors performed a meta-analysis, investigating all studies published in the last 15 years reporting measures of the risk of cancer for an MS cohort relative to population controls, including studies from the UK, Sweden, France, Denmark and Norway. By pooling the data from all available studies they found that there was a small, but significant decrease in risk of all cancers in patients with MS relative to controls (OR 0.92 (95% CI 0.87 to 0.97) p=0.004).

authors: Adam E Handel and Sreeram V Ramagopalan

source: J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry doi:10.1136/jnnp.2009.195776

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category: Epidemiology

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