Abstract
Blood donation may influence subsequent NHL development via temporary immune system alterations. To test the hypothesis that frequent blood donation is associated with an increased risk of NHL and its most common histologic subtypes, this study followed 36 576 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS), who provided information on frequency of blood donation in the past 30 years in 1992. This study confirmed 544 incident cases of NHL through 2010. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to calculate hazards ratios (HR) and 95% CI for the risk of all NHL and major NHL histologic subtypes associated with number of blood donations. In this prospective study, there was no significant evidence of an association between blood donation frequency and incidence of NHL (age-adjusted HR = 1.26, 95% CI = 0.94–1.68, comparing > 20 donations vs 0 donations over 30 years, p for trend = 0.18) or of any major NHL subtypes.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the participants and staff of the HPFS for their valuable contributions as well as the following state cancer registries for their help: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA and WY. The authors assume full responsibility for analyses and interpretation of these data. This work was supported by the NIH (CA055075, CA167552 and CA149445) and the American Cancer Society (RSG-11-020-01-CNE). K. A. Bertrand was supported by the Simeon J. Fortin Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Co-Trustee.
Potential conflict of interest
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/10428194.2015.1091928