Does chronic obstructive pulmonary disease increase the risk of prostate cancer? A nationwide population-based study

Abstract

Purpose

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major pulmonary disease. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between COPD and prostate cancer (PCa). This study aimed to investigate the association between COPD severity and PCa risk.

Patients and methods

We conducted a nationwide population-based cohort study utilizing data from 2001 to 2013 from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. Cox proportional hazards models with 1:1 propensity score-matched analysis were used to investigate the association between COPD and PCa risk. We further divided the COPD group according to severe complications (including acute respiratory failure, cardiopulmonary arrest, pneumonia, and acute exacerbation) to test for the relationship between COPD severity and PCa risk.

Results

This study included 47,634 patients (23,817 COPD patients and 23,817 matched non-COPD controls). Among them, 756 (1.59%) were diagnosed with PCa during a mean follow-up period of 7.05±4.13 years; 387 (1.62%) were from the COPD group and 369 (1.55%) were from the control group. Compared with the patients without COPD, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for PCa in the COPD patients was 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.95–1.27), while that in the COPD patients with complications was 2.46 (95% CI 1.96–3.61).

Conclusions

An increased risk for PCa was found among the COPD patients with complications. COPD complications included acute respiratory failure, cardiopulmonary arrest, pneumonia, and acute exacerbation. These findings may help physicians in treating COPD with complications and in remaining alert to the potential development of PCa.

Keywords:

• National Health Insurance Research Database
• prostate cancer
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Supplementary material

Table S1 ICD-9 diagnostic codes of variables

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Tri-Service General Hospital Taiwan (TSGH-PH-108-10 and TSGH-C108-048) and Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital Taiwan (TCRID108-30). The implications and conclusions of this study do not represent the opinions of the Bureau of National Health Insurance, the Department of Health, or the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan.

Author contributions

FWC and HYC wrote the manuscript. RJH and WLH wrote the proposal and designed the manuscript. FWC and HYC contributed to the conception of the study. FWC and HYC collected the data and conducted data analysis. RJH revised the manuscript and data analysis. All authors contributed toward data analysis, drafting and critically revising the paper, read and approved the final manuscript, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.